Descendants of the Berkshire Bints

SYDNEY GEORGE SMITH & CATHERINE BINT

THE NEW ZEALAND BINT FAMILY

THE VOYAGE

CHARLOTTE'S ALBUM

OLD TARATA PHOTOGRAPHS

GEORGE BINT

PHILIP BINT &  ELIZA DAY

EDWARD HAYWARD & CHARLOTTE BINT

WALTER & LILLIAN BINT

SYDNEY SMITH & CATHERINE BINT

JAMES BINT & ELLEN STRATFORD

LESTER & ROSA BINT

WILLIAM & ROSE

BERTHA BINT

COUSIN ARTHUR SOANES & 1880s TARATA

THE RAWLINSONS

IRENE HANNAM'S LETTERS

LORNA SMITH'S STORY

TARANAKI MIGRANTS

Kate at Tarata

It was around 1890 that the Bint family moved up to the North Island and settled on 453 acres at Tarata, Taranaki. The tenth and youngest child Catherine (Kate) was born  there in July 1892. She was to marry  37 year old widower Sydney Smith in 1915 at New Plymouth.

Sydney George Smith was born at New Plymouth in 1879. He was the son of Warwickshire born Edward Metcalf Smith (bn 1839) and Mary Ann Golding (1846) an army officer's daughter from Chatham who had married at Auckland in 1861.

His first marriage was to Elsie Rose Herbert at New Plymouth in 1901. They had three children all born at New Plymouth, Rosa Maud (1902), Ethel Mary (1905), and Edward George Smith (1906). Rose tragically died in 1913.

Widower Sydney married 23 year old Catherine (Kate) Bint at St Mary's Church, New Plymouth in February 1915.

They had three children who were all born at New Plymouth, Raymond Sydney Smith (1916-1944), Harry Allman Smith (1918-1998), and Lorna Hazel Smith (1922)

Bertha, Kate and Lester

Catherine (Kate) Bint

Charlotte, Sydney, Kate & Lorna

The Wedding

Catherine Bint

Sydney George Smith

Sydney George Smith (c1879 – 1943) was a New Zealand politician of the Liberal Party and then the National Party, and a cabinet minister.

He was Minister of Education in the Liberal-Reform coalition Government of New Zealand from 1934 to 1935, and was also Minister of Labour.

He represented the Taranaki electorate from 1918 to 1925. At the 1918 contest, Sydney Smith was an Independent Labour candidate and in 1922 a Liberal Labour candidate . In 1925 he stood unsuccessfully for New Plymouth, but in 1928 he was successful, and he returned to Parliament until he was defeated in 1938 by Labour candidate Frederick Frost.

He was a son of the Taranaki Member of Parliament Edward Metcalf Smith. He worked in the New Zealand Railways for 20 years, and for 13 years held office in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants

Edward Metcalf Smith was born on the 10 January 1839. His birthplace is now believed to have been in Fenny Compton Warwickshire, rather than Cradley or Bradley as had been previously suggested. 

He is also believed to have been the son of Charles METCALF, Agricultural Labourer and his wife Maria Joiner rather than Charles William Smith a monumental sculptor,  who it is now believed was a relative of the family.

He began work in the local iron industry and several years later became apprentice gunsmith at the Royal Small Arms factories of London and Enfield and then at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.

On qualifying, Edward Smith was appointed garrison armourer to the New Zealand field forces. He arrived in Auckland on the African in 1861. There, on 24 December that year, he married 15-year-old Mary Ann Golding, born March 1846, the daughter of Nicholas Golding, an army officer.

Smith went to England in 1864 but returned soon after to live in Taranaki with his wife and her family. He established a gun-smithing business in Devon Street, New Plymouth, and also accepted the position of armourer to the Taranaki Militia and Taranaki Rifle Volunteers. After several years he took up a similar post in the Defence Department at Wellington.

Edward Metcalf Smith (born 1839)

Edward Smith's association with the steel industry in his early years stimulated his long-term quest to found a viable iron industry using Taranaki ironsand; he was nicknamed 'Ironsand' as a consequence. In 1868 he and his partners, Decimus Atkinson and John Perry, announced an experimental process for smelting ironsand. Smith continued refining the process during his years with the Defence Department in Wellington, but in 1873 he resigned his position to return to Taranaki. 

There he founded his major venture, the Titanic Iron and Steel Company; the company's smelter was built at Te Henui, New Plymouth, in the mid 1870s. However, the translation from experimentation to commercial viability was never fully achieved - the process was too costly for there to be a profit - and the company was wound up in 1881.

Nevertheless, Smith continued his boosting of the industry and became involved as a consultant in a smelting venture at Onehunga, Auckland, in 1892. In 1896 and again in 1901 he went to Britain in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain support for further research and development.

Smith entered politics in the 1880s. He unsuccessfully contested the New Plymouth electorate for the Liberals in 1884 and in 1887, and was finally returned as MHR for Taranaki in 1890. He held this seat, except for the 1896--99 term, until his death in 1907. Smith was remembered for his unconventional attire - frock-coat, wide waistcoat, large buttonhole and tam-o'-shanter (when out of doors) - and his habit of concluding speeches with comic lines of verse, sometimes of his own composition.

Edward Smith died on 19 April 1907 as the result of injuries received after he fell from a railway carriage in New Plymouth. He was survived by seven sons and three daughters. His wife Mary Ann died in New Plymouth on 31 August 1923. Their son, Sydney George Smith, had by then become MP for Taranaki.

Edward Metcalf  Smith's  Family

Back Row: Samuel James, William Joseph, Elizabeth Jane, John Charles

Middle  Row: Anna Maria, EMS and Daisy, MaryAnn and Herbert, Edward Nicholas, Emma Sarah

Front Row: Thomas Percy, Leonard Lichfield, Sydney George

Sydney's mother - Mary Ann Golding

Lorna in 1940

Ray Smith in 1941

 Harry Allman Smith  1918-1993  

Lorna became a WAAF in 1940, at the age of 17. She was drawn to the air force because of her father's flying contacts. Sydney George Smith, Minister of Education in the mid-1930s, was a friend of famous aviator Charles Kingsford Smith.

At that time, Kingsford Smith was doing his pioneering flights around New Plymouth in his plane, the Southern Cross, and Lorna's dad was offered free rides. "He was too scared, so he sent his children instead, which of course we adored," Lorna says. Later, her father discovered what he was missing. "He said if he had known flying was like that we wouldn't have had those trips."  see ..  LORNA SMITH'S STORY

HARRY ALLMAN SMITH

 Youngest brother, Flight Lieutenant Harry Smith, piloted bombers in Africa and later flew with the Chindits dropping supplies over the Burma line. A Chindit was the name given to a member of the Allied forces behind the Japanese lines in Burma from 1943-45.

RAYMOND SYDNEY SMITH

Her elder brother, Major Ray Smith, was in charge of B Company in the 26th Battalion, which took part in the Battle of Sangro in Italy.

"He was killed on Christmas Eve Day, 1943," Lorna says. "He was shot through the back of the head by a sniper. I understand it was at a little place called Castel Frantano."

Lorna says that her brother's batman (attendant) rescued his body from no-man's land. "He was given a proper burial in Italy, but when the (New Zealand) War Graves Commission collected bodies from here, there and everywhere, his grave could not be found. So his name has been added to the names at Cassino."

He was extremely popular; crowds flocked to see him. In 29 days, he visited at least 42 places, from Auckland to Invercargill, shaking hands, inspecting troops, visiting soldiers’ hospitals, attending school children parades, speaking and listening at formal welcomes and farewells, watching sports events, waving from railway carriages, dancing at balls, and much more.

All through his visit he was writing long letters back to his lover in London, Mrs Freda Dudley Ward. He had met her in 1918, and was besotted. The long expedition away from her was very painful to him and the letters are full of expressions of how much he misses her.

Of particular interest to New Zealand are his detailed descriptions of the places he visited, the duties he performed, and the people he met. There were some things he liked, but generally he had an extremely miserable time. In one letter he wrote ‘It is a rotten way of seeing a fine country… Returned soldiers & shrieking crowds & school children are all I shall remember from my visit my beloved, though I might add drunkinos as half the men are overflowing with scotch at most of the places I’ve been to.’

Freda Dudley Ward, an Anglo-American textile heiress who was married to a Liberal politician, William Dudley Ward, and the mother of two daughters.

Syd Smith and the Prince of Wales during the 1920 tour