Thomas Ochold - Father & Farmer and His Family
Thomas (Tom) was the sixth of the ten children born to Anna and John Wheeler at Titi Farm, Mauku.
Tom was known as an extremely hard working man who taught all his six children to work hard - no choice! He made the money to buy his first farm - 260 acres of what is now the Jonkers farm up Wairere Road at Waitakere - from climbing for kauri gum in Northland - an extremely perilous occupation. He lived for weeks at a time in the bush with a sack of flour, sugar and wood pigeons for food. It is said if you fell death was almost inevitable, but Tom did survive one such fall with badly bruised ribs. Tom told his son Allan he and his brother Ernest - who climbed with him - had two sets of clothes, which got soaked most days. They put one set out to sleep in and the other set to dry by the chimney overnight to put on the next day. In January 1910, aged 36, he married Sarah Ann Louise Irwin (Louie) and they had four children at Waitakere (Allan, Ethel, Graham, and Esme) before moving to Ngatea where two more children (Jean and Bevan) were born. In 1918 Tom sold his Waitakere farm to Artie Jonkers and moved to a farm on the Hauraki Plains near Ngatea. He believed there were better prospects for dairy farming than sheep and the move proved to be a good one, as the plains were fertile, although back breaking work was involved in draining the peat swamps and converting them to pasture. Tom lived the rest of his life farming in the area - at Ngatea, then at Mangatarata near his son Bevan, and at Maramarua near his daughter Jean (Troughton.) Tom fitted the "Wheeler model" of tall serious, quietly spoken men. He was a very strong Christian believer and spent many hours meditating on his Bible. Tom's dates: Born 23 Sept 1874 at Mauku, in the hotel building which was later moved to Patumahoe and today stands as the Patumahoe Hotel. Died 26 August, 1968, Thames Hospital. |
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