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Life in Early Poverty Bay

Boyhood in Cheshire

Boyhood in Cheshire.

Mr. Thelwall was born in Farndon, Cheshire, in 1840, and at the age or sixteen was apprenticed to a farmer page 87 at Borres Hall, on Lord Kenyon's estate, Mr. Thelwall, senr., having to pay £100 per annum for the privilege. At the conclusion of three years he was transferred also at £100 a year for three years at what was considered the best farm in Cheshire, Hatton Hall, owned by Mr. Salmon. During this time rinderpest broke out in Cheshire, and hundreds of cattle were destroyed. Things did not look too promising for farming, and Mr. Thelwall, senr., was considering his son's future when a cousin named Sam Powdrell, whose relatives still reside in Wairoa, visited England from New Zealand, and, as usual in those times, poured forth glowing accounts of the new country into the ears of Robert Thelwall. Sam Powdrell was home on a holiday, and when he left some months later, Robert Thelwall naturally went with him, the two leaving by the sailing ship England towards the end of 1865.