Thomas Poynton (1802 – 1892) and Mary Poynton (1812 – 1891) and their children were among the first Catholic families to settle in New Zealand. They were instrumental in bringing Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier to New Zealand and were involved in the growth of Catholicism and Catholic missions in the Hokianga and later on in the North Shore of Auckland.
Thomas Poynton was born in Ballivor, County Meath, Ireland. In his earlier life he was educated in France and later convicted of "Whiteboyism". [1] He was transported to Sydney in 1822. Later he met Mary Kennedy, who had been born in Sydney, and was also from an Irish Catholic background, [2] and they married.
In 1828, they moved to New Zealand. They were based in the Hokianga and lived in Papakawau. They still resided there at the time of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. They had three children, Mary Margaret (born 1830), Edward (born 1832) and Catherine (born 1836). There was no Catholic parish in New Zealand at the time so they travelled to Sydney to have their first two children baptised. [3] In 1835 Thomas Poynton travelled to Sydney to ask for a Catholic priest to serve the Catholic community in New Zealand. [4] In Rome the wheels had already been turning and in 1833 a decision had been made to appoint a Bishop to serve New Zealand and the surrounding Pacific Islands. [5] Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier arrived on 10 January 1838 and stayed at the home of Thomas and Mary Poynton until his own house was established in Kororareka. With the Poynton family in the congregation, Pompallier celebrated the first Mass in New Zealand on 13 January 1838 at Totara Point, Hokianga. [4]
Thomas Poynton had made a very good income from the timber industry as a sawmill owner in the Hokianga. Later on Thomas and Mary Poynton owned a large amount of land in Takapuna and donated some of it to Bishop Pompallier in 1867. [6] In 1899 a large plot of land was purchased by the Sisters of Mercy from Catherine Shea, the youngest of the Poynton children. The land owned by the Sisters of Mercy would eventually be used to build two Catholic schools, St Joseph's Takapuna primary school and Carmel College girls' secondary school, which sits on the edge of Lake Pupuke in Milford. [7] Thomas and Mary Poynton are both buried in O'Neill's Point Cemetery on Auckland's North Shore.
On the North Shore, there is a Crescent named after Mary Poynton and there is a large retirement facility on Shakespeare Road named "The Poynton" after the family who had originally owned the land it is built on.
The Hokianga is an area surrounding the Hokianga Harbour, also known as the Hokianga River, a long estuarine drowned valley on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand.
The Catholic Church in New Zealand is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope in Rome, assisted by the Roman Curia, and with the New Zealand bishops.
Takapuna is a suburb located on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. The suburb is an isthmus between Shoal Bay, arm of the Waitematā Harbour, and the Hauraki Gulf. Lake Pupuke, a volcanic maar and one of the oldest features of the Auckland volcanic field, is a freshwater lake located in the suburb.
Thomas William Croke D.D. was the second Catholic Bishop of Auckland, New Zealand (1870–74) and later Archbishop of Cashel and Emly in Ireland. He was important in the Irish nationalist movement, especially as a Champion of the Irish National Land League in the 1880s. The main Gaelic Athletic Association stadium in Dublin is named Croke Park, in his honour.
Milford is a suburb located on the North Shore, Auckland. It is located on northern side of Lake Pupuke. It also has a popular swimming beach, which runs some two kilometres from Black Rock in the south to Castor Bay in the north. The Wairau Creek reaches the sea at the Hauraki Gulf at the northern end of Milford Beach, and its lower tidal reaches host the Milford Marina.
SuzanneAubert, better known to many by her religious name Mary Joseph or "Mother Aubert", was a religious sister who started a home for orphans and the under-privileged in Jerusalem, New Zealand on the Whanganui River in 1885. Aubert first came to New Zealand in 1860 and formed the Congregation of the Holy Family to educate Māori children. She founded a religious order, the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion in 1892. Aubert later started two hospitals in Wellington; the first, St Joseph's Home for the Incurables in 1900, and Our Lady's Home of Compassion in 1907.
Saint Marys Bay is an inner suburb of Auckland, New Zealand.
Carmel College is a Catholic secondary school for girls located in Milford on Auckland's North Shore. It was established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1957 starting with a student roll of only 15 girls. The College's brother school is nearby Rosmini College.
Pompallier Catholic College is a Catholic co-educational secondary school located in the suburb of Maunu in Whangārei, New Zealand. It is one of nine secondary schools within the Marist network. Pompallier Catholic College is named after Bishop Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier who led the first group of Catholic Missionaries from Lyons, France, to New Zealand. The patron saint of the college is John the Baptist. Students of Pompallier Catholic College are colloquially known as Pompallians.
Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier was the first Roman Catholic bishop in New Zealand and, with priests and brothers of the Marist order, he organised the Roman Catholic Church throughout the country. He was born in Lyon, France. He arrived in New Zealand in 1838 as Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, but made New Zealand the centre of his operations.
Sancta Maria College is a co-ed Catholic School in Auckland, New Zealand. It is named after the schooner on which Bishop Pompallier travelled around New Zealand.
Philippe Joseph Viard was a French priest and the first Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Wellington, New Zealand.
The Diocese of Auckland is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in New Zealand. It was one of two dioceses in the country that were established on 20 June 1848. Auckland became a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Wellington in 1887. A large area of the diocese south of Auckland was split from the diocese on 6 March 1980 to form the Diocese of Hamilton. As of 2021, almost 40 per cent of New Zealand’s 471,000 Catholics lived within the diocese of Auckland.
The following lists events that happened during 1838 in New Zealand.
Pompallier House is a nineteenth-century building located in Russell, New Zealand which once served as the headquarters to the French Catholic mission to the Western Pacific. It is named after Jean Baptiste Pompallier, the first vicar apostolic to visit New Zealand, who founded a number of missions in the North Island. Pompallier House is owned and managed by Heritage New Zealand, who open it to the public. It is New Zealand's oldest Roman Catholic building, oldest rammed earth building, and oldest industrial building.
The Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Joseph is an heritage-listed Catholic cathedral church in Auckland CBD, situated on the corner of Federal Street and Wyndham St. It is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Auckland and the seat of the Bishop of Auckland.
St Mary's Seminary in Auckland, New Zealand, was established in 1850 by New Zealand's first Catholic bishop, Jean Baptiste François Pompallier. It operated until 1869.
Louis Catherin Servant was a French priest and missionary to New Zealand.
St Mary's Old Convent Chapel is a category 1 historic building in Ponsonby, built in 1865–1866.
O'Neill's Point Cemetery is a historic cemetery and reserve located in Bayswater, New Zealand. It is a 3.4 hectare tract of land that extends from Bayswater Ave, down to the shore of Shoal Bay. Across from it is Bayswater Park. There is a walking and cycling track that runs beside the cemetery that connects Bayswater to Takapuna and Devonport to the north and south respectively.
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