Biography

Frederick William Wedlake (c.1860-1911)

Frederick William Wedlake was a son of Frederick and Elizabeth (née Beswetherick) Wedlake. He was born in Cornwall in 1860.

Frederick, his brother John and sister Charlotte were initially left behind in England when their parents came to New Zealand in the late 1860s for the gold rush. However, in 1874 when Frederick was 14 year old, the children came out to New Zealand on the ship Asia, arriving in Otago on 26th April of that year to join their parents in Blue Spur, a town above Gabriel’s Gully near Lawrence, where they attended Blue Spur School.

By June 1881 Frederick had become a watchmaker and started a business in Peel Street, Lawrence. He also acted as time keeper for the Tuapeka Jockey Club during the early 1880s. In 1884 he moved the business to Ross Place, the main street of Lawrence. At this time his business was placing advertisements in the Tuapeka Times about every three days. In June 1885 he closed the business, sold all his stock at auction and moved on. There are some news articles about a Wedlake mining reefs in the Rees Valley near Glenorchy in 1886, and working a claim near Bucklerburn, Glenorchy in 1888.

In 1886 Frederick Wedlake married Mary McSweeney in Arrowtown. Their son, also Frederick William, was born in Arrowtown on 22nd April 1887. This son later married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Mary Clayton on 31st December 1914, in Dunedin. Lizzie was from a large gold mining family in Macetown.

The Wises directory of 1889 records Frederick Wedlake (senior) as a watchmaker in Arrowtown. Some time later the family moved to Dunedin and Frederick became a pawn broker at the Ballarat Pawn Office, 133 Princes Street.

In December of 1899 he was arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods. The case went to trial by jury on 30th August 1900 and he was found not guilty.

Frederick Wedlake died in his family’s home in Forth Street in 1911, and is buried here in the Northern Cemetery in the Wedlake family plot with his parents, wife, brother and sister.

(Details from the Tuapeka Times and the Otago Witness on the Papers Past website)