Page:Gillespies Beach Beginnings • Alexander (2010).pdf/51

 now disappeared, and after searching for some time, they found poor Williams lying on his back, with the head badly battered, and his body completely riddled with spear wounds. He was not quite dead, but although conveyed home with the greatest care, he expired before they reached half-way to the machine. It was only on arriving there that they discovered Sam was still away, upon which Steve Dennis, Jack Ayloff, Billy Wright and Donald Brown immediately started back, this time armed with a gun and a revolver. They found the unfortunate man, quite dead and quite naked, within a few yards of where the spears were first thrown. After scouring the neighbourhood for a short time and seeing nothing further of the blacks, there was nothing more to be done but to return with the dead body.”

It is stated in one report above that Henry left behind 4 children. There were three children, two sons and a daughter, Alice, with both sons, Fred and Henry Williams later becoming part of the Sullivan/Williams Gillespie’s Beach story. I wrongly named this daughter Emma in Westland Heritage.

Henry’s widow, Eliza, remarried Charles Chesterman of Hounslow, England in Australia. I have sighted the marriage entry. The pair returned to live at Kaniere near Hokitika where a further 7 children were born and where the three Williams children attended school as did their younger Chesterman half-brothers and sisters. Family oral history told that Charles Chesterman was also a partner in the Caledonia crushing machine in Queensland although his name doesn’t appear in the above reports other than by indication of the ‘two or three others’ mentioned above in one article.

Anecdotal material given to researchers often differs from factual data later obtained through research from original sources. Olive McGlashan whose father was Dick (Thomas) Chesterman, son of Eliza (ex Williams) and Charles Chesterman, in a letter to me in the early 1990s, said that Charles had “rescued Eliza and the children.” It therefore appears that after the murder, Charles made his way