Among all of the seemingly well-ordered and organised bits of information and data that I have accumulated while compiling this collection of “tree” stuff the oddest piece so far has to be the coincidence (or 19th century “networking”?) between two families of passengers on board the 1860s voyage of the Huntress.

This coincidence is made even more intriguing as an error on my part is what allowed me to identify it.

I (for some reason that I can no longer recall ) was working on the assumption that one or several ofour ancestors arrived in New Zealand on board the vessel called the Mystery. It did 3 trips to New Zealand. Now, I cannot recall WHY I had made this presumption, but I thought that it was connected to the Abbott family and potentially the Hutts. Of course, we now know that the Hutts -Thomas and his wife and brood, including young Mary Ann-destined to be the second wife of Joseph Alfred Abbott actually arrived on board the Huntress. Originally bound for Timaru, the Huntress was forced by bad weather to land in Lyttleton. So despite me spending lots of hours looking for information relating to the three voyages of the Mystery – there was no connection (or so I thought). Read on…

The coincidence that I referred to was that on that voyage of the Huntress – ironically its last, as it sailed away from Lyttleton bound for South America and was never seen again – for on board that charming little ship was indeed the Hutt clan, but also  the Blake family (not too sure if they will be related to those that feature in the Gregory-Hunt tree or not, but one of them does end up in Hawera) and the Benbow family. As it turns out the daughter of James Benbow,  Emily Maud who was born in 1887 and married Arthur Ackroyd, is the Grandmother of Christine Stoke, (adopted by Rita and Ron Beardsely) who married Benny James Kemp.  On board that ship was Ben’s great great Grandmother: Mary Ann Hutt.

So the great, great, great grandmother and the great great great Grandfather of Ben and Chris’s children were on that ship on that voyage. Pretty damned cool.

I have not yet tried to trace a connection to the Benbow family that resided at Ruru back in the 1970s.

The Mystery, as it turns out did have a connection: on board was a messrs Stephen and Jeremiah Hunt of Lincolnshire England. These gentle men were cousins of Frederick Hunt (of Pitt Island) and they settled in Akaroa. Stephen was infamous for having 28 sired children.