Mrs Wilhelmina Riddell (née Glendinning)

Wilhelmina Brown Glendinning was born 13 September 1837, the fifth child of James and Elizabeth Brydone.   On 27 December 1861 she married Walter Riddell at Eskdalemuir, Dumfrieshire, Scotland. Four months later they boarded the Grasmere, an immigrant ship bound for Otago.  Wilhelmina kept a diary during the four-month voyage that is now in the Museum archives.  It offers a wonderful insight into the experience of steerage passengers aboard sailing ships making the huge voyage from Scotland to New Zealand.  On arrival the young couple stayed first in the Immigration Barracks and then rented a house with fellow passengers the Roys.  Finding the 25 shillings weekly rental a ‘steep price’, the two families leased land in Smith Street and built a house of their own, with two separate entrances.

In 1864 Walter bought a block of land at Peggy’s Hill on the Otago Peninsula. He and Wilhelmina named their farm ‘Ivy Bank’ and set about clearing the land, farming dairy cows and raising 11 children. Their struggles are well described in Walter’s diary, a copy of which is also in the Museum collection. At the start of 1866 Walter wrote ‘….if God grant me health I will be a clear man (of debt) in another year. I have increased in the year that is past, a house, an acre of land cleared, 15 hens, 2 cows and a son.’To help achieve their goal, he worked at his trade as a joiner, drawing the plans and building the Pukehiki Presbyterian Church and Manse at Highcliff. He felled and milled timber from his own farm for the job and also made the furnishings.

In 1871 Walter was appointed foreman of works at Larnach Castle where he worked for the next ten years. He was also a founder of the Otago Peninsula Cheese Factory Company at ‘Springfield Farm’, Highcliff. In 1892 he took over as Manager of the Taieri and Peninsula Milk Supply Company. Walter and Wilhelmina moved to Dunedin about 1901 and settled in the company manager’s house on the factory site at 7 Great King Street, now occupied by the Countdown Central Supermarket car park. Wilhelmina died in 1909 aged 72 years. Walter survived until 1922 when he died aged 84.