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round the turn of the twentieth century, a young couple from a mountain village in Lebanon, along with their three small children, decided to immigrate to the other side of the world. Their destination – the small ‘down under’ nation of New Zealand.
This was a bold step for a husband barely out of his teens and his wife who was just eighteen. As was the custom in Lebanon in those days, they married very young.
Their DNA was very much inherited from their Phoenician ancestors, who had once flourished in the area of the Mediterranean that would eventually become Lebanon.
Phoenicia was a sea-faring merchant empire that stretched to the edges of the then-known world, so travel and adventure were in this young couple’s blood!
After a long sea voyage through treacherous waters, they settled in the small town of Blenheim, situated at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. They chose this location because the only other Lebanese family they knew in New Zealand lived there.
The Peters were relatives from the same mountain village of Beshārrī back home in Lebanon, very close to the Cedars of Lebanon which had trees three thousand years old! The Peters family had made the long and arduous journey to New Zealand some years earlier.
So here they were… half the world away from home in a totally foreign culture; not knowing the language; and separated from family, friends, and everything that was familiar.
Gold Rush
The discovery of gold in this newly settled British colony spurred many mining towns up and down the South Island’s west coast, creating an opportunity for the young Lebanese husband and father to spend months on end travelling from town to town by horse and cart, selling pots and pans to the miners.
His young wife stayed behind with her relatives, taking care of the couple’s three small children.
Tragedy Strikes
Making his way home from one fateful trip, after being away for about three months, the husband was crossing the bridge over a flooded river not far from home when it unexpectedly collapsed. He, his horse, and cart were suddenly swept away. Sadly, he drowned and all was lost.
His devastated widow was at a loss and could only think of going back home to Lebanon. However, in those days to get there was not just a 24-hour plane ride like it is today. It meant spending many months on a ship, crossing some perilous oceans, at great expense!
Going It Alone
So instead, leaving her three children behind with the relatives, this brave young woman somehow managed to find another horse and cart, and off she went by herself for months on end, selling pots and pans to the miners in order to provide for her family.
Only the Lord knows what a young woman alone had to put up with in those rough, lawless gold mining towns. I’m sure she would have many a tale to tell!
However, she seemed to survive intact and after about two years, she had saved enough to take herself and the children back to Lebanon.
Globe Trotters
After several years in her home country, she remarried. Amazingly, she and her new husband, along with the three children from her first marriage, made the long journey back to New Zealand, where they eventually settled in the rural town of Hastings, on the east coast of the North Island.
There she had three more children. The youngest was Agnes, my mother (see photo above)!
Earthquake in the ‘Shaky Isles!’
By the late 1920s, my grandfather and grandmother, Mansour and Ruby Joseph, and their family of six children had established one of the town’s most popular restaurants. The entire family pitched in, even the youngest daughter Agnes, who was approaching her teens.
Then tragedy struck again on Tuesday, February 3, 1931. Life suddenly came to a screeching halt at 10:47am when an earthquake destroyed Hastings and the neighboring coastal town of Napier, killing 256 people! The land shook for a long time and huge portions rose up out of the ocean! To this day, it remains New Zealand’s deadliest natural disaster.
At that instant, my mother was riding home from a school function in the car with her mother. Agnes’ best friend was also returning home, riding with her mother in the car just ahead of them. Suddenly the road opened up, swallowing the lead car whole, and closed back up again. The car and its occupants were never recovered!
The trauma to the Joseph family, who lost everything when the entire town including their restaurant, was destroyed and to young Agnes, having witnessed the loss of her best friend, is impossible to calculate; however, it took a terrible toll!
The only injury my father sustained that day was when the tile came loose from a roof near where he was standing at school and hit him in the head.
My grandfather, on the other hand, was very fortunate to escape with his life. He had run back into his house to try and retrieve some valuables, when the house began collapsing around him.
Today, Napier’s airport rests on the land that rose from the sea during the earthquake, with the pre-earthquake shoreline now about a mile inland!
Getting Together During the War Years
Eight years later, New Zealand, as part of the British Commonwealth, entered into World War II and sent her finest young men to fight in Europe and the Middle East.
Among those men was my father, Pat Beacham, who had met Agnes Joseph shortly before at a dance in Hastings. With the urgency of the times, a close bond quickly developed between the two. That bond would remain strong the four years Pat was away, as evidenced by the shoe box filled with love letters they exchanged during that time, and which I later surreptitiously perused in my early teens.
However, the beautiful Agnes had her share of other suitors during the war years, one of them being an American serviceman stationed in New Zealand, who wanted to take her back to the United States after the war. To her credit, Agnes chose the dashingly handsome, if not slightly retiring Pat. She did ultimately go to live in America, but only vicariously through a wayward, but eventually God-loving son!
Getting Together After the War
Pat, a sergeant in the artillery, was wounded twice in campaigns in Egypt and Africa. Having been taught Latin at Catholic school, he quickly adapted that knowledge to learn Italian. Pat spent the remaining years of the war as an interpreter in Italy.
Shortly after Pat’s return from war, he and Agnes were married; however, their relationship did not get off to the best start. Pat returned home pretty much emotionally drained from the horrors of war and had virtually nothing to his name.
The newlyweds moved in with Agnes’ parents, which is not exactly the best way to establish the foundation of a marriage. Pat found it very difficult to assert himself and often acquiesced to the strong-willed Agnes, secure in her own element and supported by her family.
By the time they bought their own home a block away, the relationship was established and Agnes pretty much steered the ship. I was the second of four sons, born a few years later. The third son, John unfortunately only lived for 24 hours.
