James Peers was born in Winsford, Cheshire, England, in the 1820s, possibly around 1828. There is a great difference in his age in various documents. His father's name was William, and he may have been William Bent Peers.

In the 1851 census in the Cheshire town of Cheadle Moseley, it is recorded that he was living at the same address as Sarah Fletcher with Sarah's three children. James is recorded as being 26 years old, and Sarah 32. They were married on the 24th of February 1851 in Stockport. Sarah's youngest daughter, Ellen, died in 1851. James worked in a mill as a cotton mixer.

In 1851, their first child, William, was born. He died in 1852. In 1853, John Fletcher Peers was born to them at Stockport, Cheshire. In 1856 Joseph Fletcher Peers was born. It was in that year too that they decided to emigrate to New Zealand, taking with them Samuel Fletcher, Eliza Fletcher, the boy John and the baby Joseph.

The ship was the Alma. It was 1070 tons and sailed by Captain Ross. There were ten cabin passengers and 396 steerage passengers. The ship left Liverpool on Saturday 14 February 1857 and took three months to reach Wellington - arriving on Friday 15 May. It cost 18 pounds each for the passage. Reports say that on board they became friendly with Joseph and Elizabeth Lomas and their seven year old daughter Harriet, cotton mill workers. However, Harriet Lomas was born in Brinksway, Stockport - which is where the Peers family lived - so the Peers and Lomas families may well have known each other prior to the voyage.

From 1858 on, Sarah and James lived in Karori Road, Wellington. James worked as the overseer of a prison chain gang at Wellington's Mount Cook prison. His step-daughter, Eliza, married in Wellington in 1858. She had two children, and died giving birth to the second in 1862.

In 1861, James and Sarah had a daughter, Mary Ann Fletcher Peers.

Around 1865 James was working as a gauger, which is a job of inspecting dutiable bulk goods.

Step-son Samuel Fletcher got a job working on the roads for six shillings a day. He stayed with this for six weeks, and then went to Hawkes Bay where he worked with sheep and cattle. In 1862 he purchased 144 acres of land at Wakarara, Hawkes Bay. Four years later he returned to Wellington and married Harriet Lomas, the daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth, who had travelled from Liverpool with them. He and Harriet went to live at Wakarara.

The following year, Harriet returned to Wellington to have her first baby at her mother's place. They called the baby Elizabeth (later she became Mrs H.J. Nicholls). Harriet's mother was also expecting a baby, but she died giving birth. The baby survived and was named Elizabeth Ann - although she was called Annie to distinguish her from Harriet's Elizabeth.

Harriet took both babies back to Wakarara, and with her went her parents-in-law, James and Sarah Peers, and their three children John, Joseph and Mary Ann. Annie Lomas was a sickly child, and six months later she died. She was the first to be buried in the Pendle Hill Cemetery. Samuel's wife, Harriet, had called their farm Pendle Hill - after Pendle Hill near Clitheroe in England.

The Fletcher's clay hut was extended to form a double unit wherein the families lived one at either end. The clay hut had walls two feet thick and four feet high, with a thatched roof. Samuel and James worked on the farm, presumably aided by John Peers and the eleven year old Joseph. Harriet and Sarah were kept busy running the "homestead" - sewing children's clothes and dying them reddish-brown with rimu bark, sewing muslin curtains and dying them bright orange with onion skins, and cooking in the outside clay ovens. These ovens had fires built in them, and the bread was put in after the hot embers had been raked out. One day, after heavy rain, Sarah Peers's oven collapsed when it was full of pastry.

Their life was ruled by the Waipawa River. It flooded frequently, and often meant they were cut off from the few neighbours they might have had. Occasionally they travelled twenty miles to Waipawa to collect supplies. Once a month the Anglican Minister called to conduct a service, and would usually stay the night.

Undoubtedly too, he had frequent christenings to perform, for Harriet and Samuel had thirteen children. Sarah acted as midwife. In 1868 Eliza Ellen (later Mrs C. Alder) was born. Joseph was born in 1870, Sarah (later Mrs G. Douglas) in 1871, Ellen (later Mrs E. Cook) in 1872, Albert in 1875, Herbert on 7 October 1876, the twins George and William on 11 June 1878, Edward (known as Tom) on 29 March 1880, Jane (later Mrs R. Dassler) on 22 May 1882, and Annie (later Mrs S. Hull) on 27 October 1884.

Harriet Fletcher lived until 1926. Doreen Goodman as a girl remembers visiting "Old Lady Fletcher" at Onga Onga.

John Peers, Sarah and James' oldest son, became a bullock driver and worked on Gwavas Station in Hawkes Bay. On 17 February 1874 he married Margaret Logan McLennan in Napier. Margaret was born in Durinish, Scotland. She was known as Peggy in Scotland and Maggie in New Zealand. They had five children - James (called Jimmy) born in 1875, Helena Lilly (called Lena - who in 1901 married Arthur James Havelock Barlow) born on 21 January 1877, John Joseph (called Johnny or Jack - who in 1916 married Florence Lydia Metherell) born on 3 April 1880, Ada Jessie (who in 1909 married Ernest Edgar Tatam) born on 2 February 1885, and born on 5 April 1888 were twins Alexander McLennan (called Alec - who late in life was to marry a widow Nell Muir) and Henry Frederick.

In 1889, on 26 March, the one year old Henry took ill. His parents lived at Makaretu. His mother took him on horseback to see the doctor at Waipawa. They stayed the night at the Onga Onga Hotel and the next morning discovered the young Henry dead. He was buried at Waipawa. In 1879 James Peers and his son John bought land at Mangataura Station, Wakarara. They were financed in this venture by a James Matthews, and they had just over 500 acres. James and Sarah moved away from Pendle Hill. From their farmhouse John and Margaret Peers ran a general store for the people of the area. In the List of Freeholders of N.Z. 1882, James and John are shown as owning land at Makaretu.

Ada Tatam (Peers) remembered sheep shearing on the Mangataura Station in the early years. Gangs of Maoris, over thirty in number, would ride all the way from the Waikato, to shear at the Station. Each would ride a horse, and they would carry ducks and hens in boxes strapped on to the horses as well as anything else they needed. The dogs tagged along as well. Their arrival was quite an event each year and everyone turned out to watch. They would always arrive in single file.

At this time there were the now extinct huia birds in the Wakarara bush, and the young Johnny Peers used to sell huia tail feathers to the Maoris.

In late August 1893 John Peers got the measles and died on 2 September. Rita Wilson, Ada's daughter, said that the measle spots instead of appearing on the skin were internal. In 1896 his widow Margaret married Jack Carson, and apart from the five Peers children, they adopted another son called Jock. Jock Carson owned what was later to become Doug Cullen's farm. There is a Carson Road at Wakarara.

On Monday 21st of January, 1884, Sarah and James Peers' other son, Joseph, married Mary Jane Kerr at Hastings. Mary Jane was an Irish woman from Portglenone, County Antrim. Joseph had shifted from Wakarara and was working on a farm at Onga Onga. Their first child James Whamby (Jim) was born in 1884, followed in 1886 by Mary Josephine (Jo), Richard Taylor (Dick) in 1887, Henry Joseph in 1889, Sarah Olivia (Ollie) in 1891, and George in 1894.

In the meantime, Sarah and James' Mary Ann married Frederick Minton Roberts in 1887. Doreen Goodman remembers often visiting Great Aunt Mary Ann, who was a widow, at Tikokino when Doreen was a girl, and that Mary Ann had a parrot. Rod McNeill recalls that when you came inside the door the parrot would call out "Josephine, Josephine" in the same high tone of voice that Mary Ann spoke in. Mary Ann always left the door open with a brick in it to keep it ajar because she had been trapped inside the house during the 1931 Napier earthquake. Mary Ann Roberts died on 19th April 1946, aged 86, and is buried at Waipawa with her parents.

Samuel Fletcher continued to buy land from neighbouring properties, until he had 1084 acres. In 1892 Samuel Fletcher caught a chill, and died of pneumonia on 21 April. Six months later, on 24 October 1892, Samuel James Fletcher (known as Jim) was born. Harriet and her sons continued to run the farm.

In 1895, Joseph, the son of Sarah and James, died on Wednesday 10 July. The years of work and family tragedies had aged Sarah. She became senile, and a year later, at Hampden (now known as Tikokino), on Friday 19 June, she died. She was 75. On June 22, she was buried at Hadley Cemetery, Waipawa. The Minister who conducted the service was the Rev. A.F. Gardiner of the Church of England.

Life continued for James Peers. On 25 November 1896, his 21 year old grandson Jimmy (James), son of John and Margaret, had an asthma attack on Gwavas Station and died. In 1898 he saw the widowed Mary Jane Peers marry John O'Sullivan at Waipawa. In 1900, his step-grandaughter Eliza Fletcher (Mrs C. Alder) died. His grandsons, Richard, Henry and George, sons of Joseph and Mary Jane, went off to the first World War - with Richard not returning. In 1907, grandson James Whamby married Kathleen Wright. They had two daughters - Catherine Mary (born in 1910) and Josephine Agnes (born 1912).

James Peers died on Wednesday 27 January 1915 at Tikokino, aged between 86 and 90, although his death certificate and gravestone states he was 86. He had outlived all his children except for Mary Ann. The Rev. T.C. Cullwick conducted the burial service at the Waipawa Anglican Church on 29 January. He was buried in the same plot as his wife Sarah in the Waipawa Cemetery.

The Peers grave stone reads: