Joseph and Mary Jane Peers

Joseph was placing phosophorus down rabbit holes. The phosphorus in his pocket caught on fire. He was taken to the Waipukurau Hospital with burns. Tetanus set in and he died. George was nine months old.

Feilding Star, 13 July 1895

After Joseph's death, Mary and the six children went to live with her late husband's parents, Sarah and James Peers, at Tikokino. Sarah had been ill for some time and was confined to a chair. She died in 1896 when George was two.

James and Sarah Peers

The older children attended Tikokino School. Then, in 1898, Mary married Tikokino widower and farmer, Irishman John O'Sullivan. It seems a strange arrangement because John O'Sullivan continued to farm variously at Blackburn and Napier, and Mary took her children and farmed her own farm at Wakarara.

The children attended Wakarara School. After he left school. George worked on his mother's Wakarara farm.

Wakarara School 1908, George Peers is the tall student at back

George Peers

Dick never returned from the war, and Henry returned suffering from gas inhalation. George was seriously wounded in the leg around the 11th of June 1915, and he had returned from the Dardanelles by 12 September. This war injury was to bother him for the rest of his life.

George Peers

Dick's will states: I bequeath unto my brother George Peers of Wakarara aforesaid Labourer the chestnut filly belonging to me and called "Fire Escape".

Richard Taylor (Dick) Peers

Alice Lightoller

Doreen Mary Peers was born on the 7th November 1918. George mother, Mary, died suddenly at Wakarara on the 30th April 1919. Richard George (Dick) Peers was born on the 2nd of July 1921. Another son, unnamed, was stillborn while they lived at Otawhao.

The family then moved up the road to Hatuma, near Waipukurau. Margaret Alice Peers was born there on the 4th of October 1926. They moved around to various place - Waipukurau, Napier, Waipawa. George was frequently ill and hospitalized as a consequence of his war injury. Often the family had little money. During the Great Depression he lost his farm in Hawkes Bay, and during the 1931 Napier Earthquake they lost the house they had just bought in Napier. Fortunately at the time they were still living in Waipawa. Alice took in boarders during her husband's illnesses to try and pay the bills.

The family then shifted to Trentham around 1931. The children went to the Upper Hutt Convent School. George worked as a Prison Warden. At Trentham another son was born in June 1933: Roger Joseph Peers. He died when two years old and is buried at St Joseph's Church, Upper Hutt. Dick attended St Patrick's College, Silverstream, and Doreen went to Sacred Heart College, Lower Hutt.

Margaret, Dick, and Doreen Peers

The family then moved to Grays Road in Hastings, although Doreen stayed in the Hutt and later went and worked as a private caregiver for an elderly man in Dannevirke. On the 21 of Novemeber 1939, Doreen married Frank Goodman at Hastings. The Peers family moved to Duart Road in Havelock North.

Peers Family 1939

From Havelock North, Dick went to World War II. He never returned. Click HERE to read a copy of a letter written by Alice's brother, Herbert Lightoller, on the occasion of Dick's death. And click HERE to read a copy of a letter written to Herbert Lightoller by the Commanding Officer on the occasion of Dick's death.

Roger and Dick Peers

Alice, George and Margaret then moved to Caroline Road in Hastings. Alice died there on the 16th of January 1949 of a heart attack, and is buried in the Hastings Cemetery. A short time after, Margaret married Bertrand Worsnop of Wakarara.

George was called "Granpa" by his grandchildren.

In 1950 George married again, to Alice Raina Stephens. They first moved to run a pub in Woodville. Then George sold his portion of the Provincial Hotel to Frank Goodman and purchased the Manchester Hotel in Feilding. George's new wife left him after a very short time. George remade his will, excluding his wife from the inheritance and leaving all to his two daughters, Doreen and Margaret.

Alice Raina Stephens

Alice Raina Stephens had been married before; first to Herbert Oliver Pedersen in 1927. They had three children: Rona, Patricia and Garry. They divorced in 1939 in Hamilton on grounds of desertion by Alice. When Alice married for the second time, son Garry took the new step-father's surname of Thurston. The two girls kept the name of Pedersen. The new husband was possibly Richard Henry Thurston. He was a divorcee with four children, one of whom was killed in North Africa during World War II. (Or she could perhaps have married one of the sons?) Thurston and Alice had a child: Anne.

After several months of marriage to George Peers, Alice failed to come home one day.

On the 8th of July 1954, George had a heart attack and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was 59. The will was not to be found! The court awarded all to Alice Raina Peers, who eventually became Mrs Clifford Ernest Jull. She lived at Taupo where she died in 2005 aged 95. Cliff Jull died there in 2008 aged 99.

In 2016 all of George Peers' grandchildren - the Goodman and Worsnop cousins - contributed to have a gravestone placed on George's grave in Feilding.