My Account
Pauline Batchelor of Nelson, left, and Christine Holmwood, of Raglan, at their grandmother’s graveside, high on a hill in Pakiri. Insert, Ruby Biorklund.
The sad saga of a young single mother who died of Spanish flu in 1917 and her orphaned daughter was given closure at the Pakiri Cemetery on June 29.
Maria Ruby Biorklund, known as Ruby, was born in 1893, the second daughter of Catherine and Magnus Biorklund, of Pakiri.
Her daughter Irene was born in 1908, but died just three years later, and her second daughter Joyce was born shortly afterwards in 1913.
Ruby’s own parents had both passed away by then, and it appears she had no choice but to leave Joyce where she was born at St Mary’s Home in Otahuhu. But, in 1917, knowing that she didn’t have long to live, Ruby brought her daughter back home to Pakiri. Their time together was short as Ruby died a few weeks later, aged 24, leaving Joyce’s care to her unmarried sister Katie.
Katie worked away from home and only had two younger brothers to help her. So, with a heavy heart, she was eventually forced to relinquish the care of her niece, now four years old, to the Auckland office of the Child Welfare Department.
According to memories from family members, Katie made the arduous journey to Auckland several times to visit her niece but was then asked not to come because it “upset the child too much”. The next time she visited, she was told Joyce had been adopted.
And that was the last the family heard of the little girl for 60 years.
Birth records show that although Joyce was registered as Joyce Margaret Biorkland, at some point, officialdom changed her surname to Brickland. She was, in fact, never adopted and spent her childhood in institutions. At some stage, she was moved from Auckland to Salisbury School in Nelson.
She married twice and raised seven children in the Marlborough district.
It wasn’t until she applied for her pension in 1978 that she discovered her real surname.
“When her birth certificate arrived, we realised the mistake,” her daughter Christine Holmwood says.
A letter from Child Welfare confirmed that Joyce’s mother was Ruby Biorklund, of Pakiri.
That might have been the end of it except for one of those moments of serendipity.
One of Magnus Biorklund’s last descendants with the same surname, Quayne Biorkland, walked into the Takaka Post Office where Christine worked and when she saw his name, she made the connection.
It turned out that Quayne was the son of Andy Biorklund, Ruby’s youngest brother, making him Joyce’s first cousin.
Joyce’s daughter Pauline Batchelor recalls that when her mother heard the news, she headed for Pakiri as soon as she could.
“She couldn’t get up there fast enough – I think secretly she had missed her birth family her whole life.”
Sadly, her aunt who had struggled so hard to keep her from the orphanage, was now in her late eighties and suffering from Alzheimer’s. No-one will ever know if she understood the reunion or not.
But Quayne’s father Andy was still living in Pakiri, and through him Joyce got to meet her large and extended whanau. Although she passed away in 1999, several of her children have maintained the connection.
Last month, Christine and Pauline unveiled a headstone on Ruby’s grave in Pakiri, which recognises her as the mother of both Irene and Joyce.
“We feel that at last our grandmother and her daughters are reunited and have finally returned home.”
