Agnes Cherrie Clark

Four members of one family all drowned in the Whau River on October 19, 1893. It was Crawford Baillie who had the unenviable task of identifying each of his loved ones as the sea gave up their bodies over the following days. Among the dead was his wife Ann, 60, their daughter Ann, 17, and sons James, 21, and John, 33. Family friend Isabella Herd, 57, of Remuera also died when the boat they were travelling on capsized. John was lost after launching an impossible but brave rescue attempt in a small dinghy later described as "wholly unfit" for the sea. The Baillie family lived on the Te Atatu peninsula where Crawford and his wife were among the original settlers. They eked a living off the land and were struggling financially when the disaster struck. Worst hit was John’s wife Agnes, who was still relatively young and widowed with a family of eight including newborn twins. A public appeal was launched by Henderson School head teacher Ellen La Trobe in an effort to give the family some kind of future. "The Baillies are decent people," she wrote in a letter published by a number of newspapers. "They are greatly esteemed by all who knew them. "Unhappily the world has not been kind to them of late and John Baillie’s widow and little ones are left utterly destitute. "They do not own the cottage they live in or so much as a single acre of land. "No more deserving case has ever been submitted for sympathy than this and surely the generous public of Auckland, who are always so ready to help a deserving cause, will not let the cry of the widow and orphans pass unheeded." How much was raised is not known but Agnes and her children eventually moved to Dargaville where she remarried in 1899. But her woes were far from over. Her twin sons David and John, born just three weeks before their father’s drowning, were killed during World War One, the first in 1915 at the Dardanelles and the second a year later in France. Tragedy, it seems, was a constant in the Baillie household. Agnes spent some of her later years living with a daughter in Avondale and died in 1933, aged 78. She is buried with her first husband and in-laws at Waikumete Cemetery. Crawford Baillie remained in Te Atatu with his one surviving boy, Robert, until 1910 when they shifted to Te Awamutu. He died four years later and was brought back to west Auckland for burial – also at Waikumete. Source: Western Leader (Tuesday, 22 September 2009, p.7) http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/local-blogs/tales-from-t... [NOTE: It was even worse as Agnes was the stepmother of Thomas Clark born in Auckland on 08 May 1898. His birth mother died just 7 days after he was born. Agnes married his father Thomas on 25 August 1899 so raised young Thomas as her son from when he was 15 months old. Thomas was serving during World War I when he died on board the Ruahine on 26 August 1917 of Spinal Meningitis. He was buried at sea, but is remembered on the Auckland Provincial Memorial at Waikumete Cemetery - Debbie McCauley, 17 September 2021].