Margaret Elizabeth Revell

From Revell Family History notes compiled by CH Bullot, Hamilton, NZ, 1969.

Margaret Elizabeth Braddell and Thomas Revell met in Cheltenham while Thomas was there recuperating. They married on 24th February 1827. Thomas was 40 and Elizabeth only 16. They lived at "Teighlin" which was rented from Lord Fitzwilliam. He [Thomas?] was farm baliff to the lord. Next they moved to "Castle Timon" where they had a fire so they went to a gome in Marion Square, Dublin. Later they lived at Williamstown and then Criaghport, both near Dublin. In 1844 they returned to "Teighlin" but in the meantime the landlord had sold much of the land and there was not enough of the property left to make a living on.

The family fortune was dwindling. In 1850 when son, Thomas, was born at Stetlarge near "Teighlin" much of the family property had to be sold. Because they were of aristocratic stock there seemed little hope of the sons getting on well in ireland. Margaret persuaded her husband to leave ireland (another branch of the family had already migrated to the USA and this may have influenced her).

Margaret and the chldren came to New Zealand on the "Minerva" and arrived at Lyttelton on February 4th 1853 and lived at the immigration barracks for eleven months. Thomas and the elder sons, William and Edward followed later in 1853 after finalising their affairs in Ireland. They settled at "Korotueka", Kaiapoi and here sons William, Edward and John and the eldest daughters were farming and doing other work. Thomas was 66 years old in 1853 and it would have been doubtful if he could have adapted himself to the huge change. He died in 1869.

The family had a hard struggle in Canterbury. Margaret and her daughters were making Maori dresses and melting tallow for candles for sale for the sake of economy.

"Korotueka" remained in the Revell family for 113 years until the property was purchased by the government for motorway construction in 1966.

OBITUARY. Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Revell, whose death took place at Stoke Lodge, Rangiora, on Sunday, was one of the early colonists, having arrived with her husband, the late Mr Thomas Revell, in the ship Minerva, on Feb. 2, 1853. They took up their residence at Kaiapoi, with which place the name of the family has been prominently associated long since. Korotueka, where Mr Revell died in 1869, at the age of eighty-two, was one of the first houses of any pretension built in Kaiapoi. Mrs Revell, who had reached the advanced age of ninety-one when death removed her, was very generally esteemed. Her surviving children are Messrs Edward, Henry, John, Thomas, and F. H. Revell, Mrs R. L. Higgins, Mrs C H Torlesse, and Mrs C. E. Danvers. Star, Issue 7058, 26 March 1901, Page 3