William R. Marsters

An interesting story is told of William Marsters by Thomas Trood who was at one time the British Vice Consul at Apia, Samoa. Thomas Trood died in 1916 but in 1912, published an article entitled “Island Reminiscences – a graphic detailed romance of a life spent in the South Sea Islands”.

My book, “The Masters of Walcote” includes his chapter on “A Pearl Shelling Enterprise” which tells of an adventure that Marsters had BEFORE he started working for Brander and eventually ended up on Palmerston Island. It also took place not too long after Marsters arrived in the Pacific. 

I added this article into the Walcote book because it came to light after the publication of my first book “Stories of Palmerston”. It was Gerald McCormick, a scientist working in the Cook Islands and an avid William Marsters historian, who located the article. It is a rare glimpse into William Marsters and his adventures not long after his arrival in the Pacific. It was by someone of authority who had had direct contact with him and who was in a position to have recorded the event. 

William Marsters came to Trood’s attention around about 1858. He had heard that Marsters had mentioned that on his way to the Pacific by way of Honolulu, he had come across an island with an abundance of pearl-shell. The island was located to the north-east of Penrhyn and inhabited by cannibals, but the potential value of the pearl-shell could be worth the risk.

In the mid-1800s pearl shell was a highly valued commodity for buttons in Europe. It was selling for £120 a ton (around about £50,000 in today’s money so it was worth considering the investment). Trood and other potential investors persuaded Marsters and investigate the possibility of retrieving some of this bounty.

To tell the story briefly, quite a lot of money was invested. Marsters was sure he could locate the island again, and that he’d be able to employ divers from among his wife’s family in Penrhyn. However, several unusual incidents occurred on the journey to Penrhyn and when they arrived on Penrhyn, Sarah’s father, the chief refused to provide divers for the venture. The island they were seeking was tapu (taboo). The venture had to be called off.

Trood reminisced about what could have been, and at one stage later on in his South Pacific career he considered going in search of the island again with divers offered by Brander who later employed Marsters in the Cook Islands. But Trood reconsidered…”Divers or no divers, the venture stood thick with dangers.” 

Trood left Marsters on Manihiki and never saw him again although he obviously kept track of his whereabouts for several years after, as he knew when Marsters had arrived on Palmerston Island, and that he eventually died there.

(from maureenhilyard.blogspot 2009)

Checking through an interesting discussion on the Genealogy.com Marsters Family Genealogy Forum I found a thread that was debating the issue of who was the “Middle Family” and why were they called the Middle Family when they say they are descended from the first wife of William Marsters. 

If you read any documented genealogy, and researched material as in the “Stories of Palmerston” or “The Masters of Walcote”, you will see that Akakaingaro (who was named Sarah by William Marsters) was in fact married to William Marsters according to pre-missionary custom on Penrhyn island. 

I am descended from Sarah’s family (my lineage is William I, William II, Tearaia, Jane, me). Akakaingaaro / Sarah’s family is often referred to as the “first family” because of his marriage to her. William had a liaison with another woman on Penrhyn before he married Sarah, but even she is not referred to as his “first family” even though Arehata had a daughter, Litia (in Penrhyn, and Ritia in Rarotongan).

It is this acknowedged marriage on Penrhyn that identifies Sarah as the head of the “first family”. However, when it comes to the allocation of land her descendants are referred to as the “middle family”. The other two (de facto) wives of William Marsters were allocated the beach sides of the island.

The sections are marked out by trees and stone edged pathways. In the middle section are some communal usage areas eg the church, the water tank and their “mountain” or “refuge hill”. This is a slight mound in the middle of the island where the families frequently ran for safety during the hurricanes of the early days. Even today it provides the island’s residents with some protection during high seas.

(from maureenhilyard.blogspot 2009)

Another significant edict that William Marsters made for his wives and children was that he would only allow English to be spoken on Palmerston Island.

It was noted by one of his grandsons that Marsters was often used as a translator between traders and the local islanders. This particular position of importance was probably one of the reasons why he was allowed to take his family on board during some of his trips. However, despite this knowledge and skill he possessed as part of his working life, when it came to his personal domain – Palmerston Island – on which he made the rules and regulations, English was to be the one ‘public’ language spoken outside the home.

William Marsters insisted that his children married spouses from other islands. The concession that he made for the native languages of their spouses if they continued to live on Palmerston was that the families could speak their own languages and dialects within the confines of their own homes.

This was probably one of the first situations in the Cook Islands where bilingualism was encouraged or at least condoned and where the children got to be fluent in their two home languages. It also meant that within the homes of each of the families, they were able to continue to learn the culture of their “alien” parent which later contributed to a range of craft goods that was heavily influenced by the cultures of the northern group islands from where many of the son’s wives originated. 

This earlier generation were profuse producers of these intricately woven goods which were readily snapped up by visiting yachties and cruise vessel visitors, and their production greatly enhanced the meager incomes of the families despite selling their goods very cheaply. It seems that whatever was taught in the homes of the families was their own concern, as long as the children were also taught to understand and to speak English fluently so that they could read the Bible and understand the sermons of their grandfather’s latter years.

The English language they learned was of course his form of English. For years his brogue was described as that of a Gloucestershire farm boy. However, as has been found through the research of parish records and census documents, he was actually a Leicestershire farm boy. The Gloucestershire accent that the linguists identify is a bit of a mystery.

Linguistic experts seem to be quite sure of the accent, and there is a possibility that between the years of the 1841 census and the 1851 census when he was 20 years of age, he could very well have lived elsewhere. The 1851 census does not specifically mention an occupation for Richard. It simply describes him as the “farmer’s son”. So although he was at home, he could have been in between jobs otherwise I feel sure that his occupation would have been listed. It appears that he did remain in Walcote, and by the end of the year was a married man, although maybe not to the woman he really wanted.

(from maureenhilyard.blogspot 2007)

What constitutes a hero? The first of Google’s several definitions for a hero is that he is “a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility and strength”. Now our ancestor certainly fits that definition or at least parts of it.

William Marsters was definitely a man of exceptional courage and strength. Once he had arrived in the Pacific around about 1856, it appears he settled for a while on Penrhyn, the most northern island in the Cook Islands. There he married the daughter of one of the chiefs on the island (there are two villages in Penrhyn, each on separate islets lying opposite each other around one of the largest lagoons in the world).

He took his wife and children on the trading boats on which he worked. Being able to do this implies that he could have had some status within the set up of the trading company with whom he worked. He left his wife and daughter Ann on Samoa at one stage. She may have been sick when his family was dropped off on the island as he continued with his work. When he returned however, he was to find that little Ann had drowned while at play near a local river. Their second daughter Elizabeth was to suffer some illness that caused her death while they all worked on the island of Manuae, trying to establish a copra plantation for his employer.

Despite these setbacks, William and Sarah established themselves on the island of Palmerston where they were to again produce copra and gather and dry the beche de mer which were highly prized on the Asian market. The courage and strength that Google’s definition includes of a hero, is highlighted by the way in which he organized himself and others on the island on which he was to live out the rest of his life.

He arrived on the island in 1863 and died on the island in 1899. He designed and helped to construct the buildings within defined areas on the small islet on which he established the homes for his family and the others who made up the island’s population. In this respect, he was very much a leader. He was a hero in the eyes of his family.

(from maureenhilyard.blogspot 2007)

From an early age, my interest was captured by the mystery surrounding the origins of our esteemed ancestor – a Englishman who had originally travelled around the Pacific as a trader and general seaman until he was eventually dropped off on an isolated little atoll in the Pacific specifically to gather copra and beche de mer for a Tahitian trader, John Brander.

The record of William Marsters and his adventures in the Pacific were related mainly by word of mouth among the family and to researchers who travelled to the island to seek out information about this man who eventually established a dynasty on a tiny island in the Cook Islands.

Depending on the informant and from what has been revealed of him in my family history research, the stories that were told of him were somewhat embellished to make him a little larger than life. Ironically, the one photograph we have of the old gentleman was of him seated on the beach with a background of island palms. He appears to have been small in stature.

If we were looking for a hero in the family, you have to admit that his origins took on a heroic bent when we learned from the old people that he had left England and travelled to the South Pacific via the California goldfields. He married the daughter of a chief and took her and their children on his travels around the Pacific. Sadly his eldest daughters died during these travels. One daughter, Ann, died in Samoa and the other, Elizabeth, on a copra development venture on another isolated island – Manuae in the Cook Islands.

He is supposed to have arrived in the Pacific with gold in his possession but this does not seem probable because he ended up being rescued from Manuae, impoverished and needing work which is apparently how he ended up on Palmerston Island.

(From maureenhilyard.blogspot, 2007)