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Saturday 17 March 2012

More Gidleys in New Zealand

I've just discovered that another Gidley family emigrated to New Zealand, though I haven't found their names on any published passenger lists.
Another seaman, Charles Arthur Gidley and his wife Ada Louisa, nee Muchamore, plus their two children, Rhoda and Horace, settled in the Wellington area, probably just after the First World War, and it seems they flourished there. Newspaper reports of the time reveal that in 1925 Ada Gidley presided over a meeting of ladies in the Early Settlers' Hall, Wellington, where she dealt with the seamens' strike from a woman's point of view. As the wife of a British seaman with over 28 years service, she also told the meeting that conditions in England were very different from New Zealand. In England she had had a 6 roomed house and an acre of land for which she paid 7s 6d weekly, but in New Zealand she paid £2 10s for a smaller house with no land.
C.H.A. (Horace) Gidley enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in January 1940.
Source: PapersPast available at http//www.natlib.govt.nz.
Charles Arthur Gidley was the youngest child of James Gidley originally of Dean Prior, who travelled from there to Plymouth, then on to London, where several of his children were born, then back to Plymouth.
And I should also mention Brian Gidley, singer in West End shows of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, who emigrated to New Zealand more recently. He was from the Buckfastleigh Gidley family.

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