Biography

Charles Buchan (1830-1910)

Charles Buchan was born in 1830 at Lonmay, about five miles from Peterhead in Scotland. He was known by the family as ‘Dade’. He married Janet Buchan. Four of their children were: Peter (1858), Jessie (1860), Alexander (1862), and William (1872). These sailed with their parents to New Zealand, but there is thought to be at least one other who stayed behind.

Dade was involved in the fishing industry, and worked as a carpenter and a fishcurer. From at least 1881, Dade, Janet, and the four children mentioned above, as well as Jessie’s husband Jack, lived at 4 Port Henry Lane, Peterhead.

It was increasingly difficult to make a living from ‘an unforgiving sea in a harsh climate and on a bleak, rugged coastline’ and in 1893 the family decided to leave a community it had been a part of for centuries. There were sixteen altogether in the party which sailed for New Zealand aboard the SS Rimutaka:

(a) Charles (Dade) and Janet Buchan;

(b) Peter, Jessie, Alexander and William – children of Dade and Janet;

(c) Jack, husband of Jessie, and Agnes, wife of Alexander;

(d) John, Maggie, Jessie, Charles and Arthur – children of Jessie and Jack; and

(e) Charles, Alexander, and James – children of Alexander and Agnes.

Dade was 63; he provided the funds for the passage and was probably the instigator of the emigration. The destination of the Rimutaka was Wellington, where the Buchans boarded a smaller ship, the Flora, which carried them on to Dunedin.

Why New Zealand? Probably because an intensive immigration campaign had been running since the 1870s throughout Britain. In Scotland the New Zealand government had 73 immigration agents and advertised in 288 Scottish newspapers.

The Buchan family settled in Carey’s Bay, a mile from Port Chalmers. They fished in the comparative calm of the inner Otago Harbour instead of the hazardous and stormy North Sea. The main breadwinners were Jack, his brother-in-law Alexander and father-in-law Dade. The younger two men would fish from an open boat in the harbour and Dade would sell the fish.

Tragedy came to the family when first Peter and then Alexander died some two years after their arrival in Carey’s Bay. Then the family moved to Dunedin. About 1900 Dade became established at 80 Athol Place. About 1903, his fourteen-year-old grandson Charles was kept from attending school by financial problems at home, and he spent two years helping his grandfather, selling fish around the streets of Dunedin. In later years Dade became almost completely blind, although in his grandson Charlie’s words he was ‘still as straight as a ramrod’ and continued to the end to split firewood with an axe. He died in 1910 aged 80.

— Source: From Peterhead to Passchendaele by Roy Buchan.

— Other burials recorded at the same site:
Minnie REID d. 1887,
Jessie BUCHAN d. 1908 (grand-daughter of Charles),
Jessie BUCHAN d. 1910 (daughter of Charles),
Janet BUCHAN d. 1915 (wife of Charles),
John BUCHAN d. 1926 (son-in-law of Charles),
Annie BUCHAN d. 1972,
Rosemary BUCHAN d. 1988,
Robert BUCHAN d. 1995,
and Henry SCRYMGEOUR d. 1999.