James Reeve Youngman (1857 - 1952)
Alice Saward (1872 - 1948)
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Isaac Saward (1893 1948)
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Ruth Janet (1895 - 1967)
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Reeve (1900 - 1968)
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David James (1909 - 1997)
Alice Elizabeth (1911 - 2003)
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James Reeve was born in Bermondsey, England in 1857. The next year he accompanied his parents, brothers and sister when the family emigrated to New Zealand. He grew up in Oxford, Canterbury where his father was a sawyer. Patricia Youngman wrote (May 2002):
My grandfather, James Reeve, born in London 30-1-1857, had finished school in Oxford, when, as a lad of 13, he was apprenticed to a carpenter and joiner in Rangiora – Mr Withers. In the first year he received one shilling a week "and found", with an annual one shilling a week rise, to five shillings a week in his final year. He walked 12 miles home each Saturday after work, to be briefly with his family, leaving early on Monday morning for Rangiora.
His brother William, six years older, was already a qualified builder. Bill married in 1875, and had two infant daughters when his wife died just four years later. Bill and James headed north, for new starts in recently opened up areas around Takapau, Norsewood, Ormondville and Dannevirke.
A succession of housekeepers helped them raise the youngsters until Bill remarried in 1883.
In 1889 they moved to Midhirst, Taranaki. Their business sign read:
YOUNGMAN BROS.
BUILDERS
CABINET MAKERS
FUNERALS FURNISHED
They were busy with a variety of projects, including Midhirst's first butter factory, as well as their first bush farm at Waipuku.
James Reeve married Alice Saward in 1892. In 1918 they moved to Tauranga. When he died there in 1952, he was survived by 5 children, 19 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. |