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Story: Jury, Te Aitu-o-te-rangi

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Jury, Te Aitu-o-te-rangi

?–1854

Ngāti Kahungunu founding mother, landowner, farmer

This biography, written by M. J. Parsons, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1990. It was translated into te reo Māori by the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography team.

Te Aitū-o-te-rangi, the daughter of Te Whatahoronui and his first wife, Aromea, was born about 1820. She belonged to Ngāti Moe at Papawai, in Wairarapa, a hapū of Rangitāne and of Ngāti Kahungunu in Wairarapa. Her parents and her grandfather, Muretū, lived at Te Uretā, Waka-ā-pāua and Wharehanga, on the western side of the Ruamāhanga River, near present day Martinborough.

Te Aitū's childhood was disturbed by warfare as northern tribes invaded Wairarapa in the 1820s; resistance was led by her uncle, Nuku-pewapewa, and her first cousin, Pehi Tūtepākihirangi. Her father, Te Whatahoronui, and many of his people were massacred by a group of Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga and Te Āti Awa on the Wharehanga peninsula about 1834. Te Aitū and a cousin, Wī Kīngi Tūtepākihirangi, were captured and held (possibly on Kapiti Island). With the introduction of Christianity to Porirua and Kapiti in 1839, captives were released. Many returned home but Te Aitū, reputedly a very beautiful woman, had met John Milsome Jury, from Wapping, London, England, a whaler and coastal trader. The couple left the Kapiti area and went to Nukutaurua, on the Māhia peninsula, where Te Aitū's surviving relations had been living since 1834, under the protection of Te Wera Hauraki, a Ngāpuhi leader. It is said that Te Aitū and John were married by the CMS missionary William Williams, at Rakaukaka, Poverty Bay, on 26 October 1840. Te Aitū was probably baptised at the same time, taking the name Hūhana (Susan/Susanna), by which she was sometimes known. They settled near Manutūke; John is said to have worked for Williams as a carpenter, building the mission house and church.

The exodus to Nukutaurua, known as Te Heke Rangatira ki Nukutaurua, came to an end around 1840 as peace was made and the exiles began to return to Wairarapa. In March 1842 Pehi Tūtepākihirangi led some 400 people, including John, Te Aitū and their son, born the previous year, to live at Te Kopi-a-Uenuku, Palliser Bay. In 1845, after the first European sheep stations were established in Wairarapa, John and Te Aitū moved inland, up the Ruamahanga River, to land called Waka-ā-paua, later the Waka-ā-paua block. Te Aitū claimed Waka-ā-paua as her home when she recovered the spade-shaped piece of greenstone, Kauorarangi, which had been hidden there earlier. She and her husband built their first home in a clearing, Ngaki-a-tōtara, on an island called Te Uretā (Jury's Island). They cultivated the land, planting wheat and oats; they also had cows, goats, horses and 200 head of cattle.

In the 1840s and 1850s John Jury sometimes helped other farmers in the district with their shearing and fencing. While he was away at the Californian goldrush from 1850 to 1851, Te Aitū worked for her neighbours, Catherine and Charles Bidwill, helping with their young family and in the laundry.

Te Aitū and John Jury had four children. The first was Hoani Te Whatahoro, who recorded many tribal traditions, laments and songs. A daughter, Annie Eliza Te Haereaute, who married Joseph Oates, was born in 1846, and another son, Charles Joseph Te Rongotumamao, in 1850. A male child, born in 1854, did not survive.

Te Aitū died in the 1850s, probably in 1854. There are several different accounts of her death. The most likely one suggests that she caught measles during the epidemic which swept through the east coast districts of the North Island towards the end of April 1854. Charles Bidwill made her coffin and she was buried either at Ngāpuke or Waitapu, old villages near Martinborough.

John Jury continued to farm Waka-ā-paua by right of his wife's claim to her ancestral land, as he later made clear at a Native Land Court hearing: when he was milling timber on the land in the 1840s no one had challenged his right to do so. Te Aitū's cousin, Wī Kīngi Tūtepākihirangi, supported the claim: the island and the land around it had belonged to Muretū, Te Aitū's grandfather, but according to Native Land Court records 'the old man' (possibly Pehi Tūtepākihirangi) had given it to Te Aitū, 'seeing that she had children'.

In 1868 a certificate of title for Jury's Island was issued to Te Aitū's children by the Native Land Court at Greytown. John Jury died on 6 August 1902 at his daughter's house at Taumata.

How to cite this page:

M. J. Parsons. 'Jury, Te Aitu-o-te-rangi', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1j7/jury-te-aitu-o-te-rangi (accessed 29 March 2024)