A Walk Down Memory Lane

Martha Sarah Kahui Bragg aka Hutana

Martha Sarah Kāhui Ihakara (Isaac) was born on 30 March 1895 at The Neck, Stewart Island. Her mother was Mereana Louise Mapepe Isaac (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe and Waitaha). Martha’s father, Walter Bruce Joss, was second mate on the Government steamer, Hinemoa.

In 1900, Mereana married fisherman, David Wybrow. It is understood that Martha was a half-sister of Tini Mare Wybrow, who married into Wairarapa, marrying Kikiwa (Tilly) Ahipene from Waimarie, south Featherston. Little is known of Martha’s early life and education but she was brought up mainly on Ruapuke Island, one of New Zealand’s southernmost islands, lying 15 kilometres to the south-east of Bluff, and worked as a housemaid at Mataura for a short period.

Martha’s marriage to Whare Ihaka Whakaka Hutana in Wellington on 7 January 1915 was opposed by her whānau, who had selected her for a local man in order to unite the land of the two families. Martha eloped with only a few clothes. Whare Hutana, the son of Ihaka Whakaka Hutana and Rina Ihakara, was from Pirinoa, south Wairarapa. His hapū was Rakaiwhakairi, a people of mixed Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Ira, Rangitāne and Ngāi Tara descent. He inherited land interests at Pūtangitangi, on the northern side of the Turanganui River, where the family farmed together.

Whare and Martha were to have three sons and two daughters. They also took in two sons as whangai, and later legally adopted their half-sister. In this way, Martha began her surrogate parenting, which, despite many tragedies, was to see her successfully bring up thirty-eight children.

Whare Hutana died on 15 August 1929, leaving Martha to cope with the farm and the children on her own with little income. She began housekeeping for the family of David Warren, a local dairy farmer and sheep breeder, who gave her two cows. Other farmers in the district gave Martha culled heifers and cows, milk cans, a cart and an old horse and she began a dairy operation. Martha and her sons handmilked their forty cows between them and then carted the milk five miles to the Pirinoa Co-op Dairy Company’s factory. When the horse bolted and smashed the cart, the directors of the dairy factory bought Martha a 1926 Dodge.

On 27 December 1936, at Pirinoa, Martha married Joseph William (Joe) Bragg, a labourer. The son of John Kaiporahu Bragg (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe), and his wife, Sarah Owen, Joe had been raised at Martha’s own birthplace at Stewart Island. After their marriage, Joe assisted Martha on her farm and also worked for the Warren family at Turanganui. In 1941 Martha received a loan from the Native Department to build a new mechanised cow shed, at that time the most modern in the district. Eventually her milking herd numbered 80 to 100 animals.

Although Martha and Joe had no children of their own, from the 1930s she regularly took in disadvantaged children. She fed and clothed them at her own expense, trained them in farm and domestic work, personal grooming and hygiene and gave them without favouritism the love and firm discipline she gave her own children. She sent most of them to Pirinoa School where, on at least one occasion, she berated the teacher for strapping one of them too severely. From then on the teacher had to get Martha’s permission before punishing any of her children. When her boys got older and assisted with the farm work she paid them a small wage and helped them bank their money regularly.

In about the 1950s, Martha turned to the Morman faith.

In the early 1950s she revisited Stewart Island for the first time since her first marriage and worked the titi (muttonbird) islands, taking some of her children with her. Her family recalled her strength and fitness at that time. She was able to swing an axe as well as the strongest of men. She was also active in the planning and building of the meeting house at Kohunui, opened in 1956.

In 1961 Martha’s eldest daughter died of cancer, aged 39, leaving five children from two marriages. Martha had already taken in the two children from the first marriage, and, although now in her mid-sixties, she demanded that the other three be handed into her care. Two of the children were awarded to her. Later she took in another grand-daughter, the last of her fostered family.

Joe Bragg died on 22 April 1966 and in her last years Martha was cared for by one of her foster sons and his wife. She died on 26 May 1975 at Masterton Hospital and was buried at Kohunui urupa. She was survived by one son and numerous foster children.

In a life scarred by the deaths of many of her immediate whānau, Martha Bragg, known to all as “Nan Bragg”, combined integrity with hard work. Abrupt and outspoken, she was always busy, and could knit and crochet as well as she could drive cows, dig ditches and mend fences. One of the many Māori women and men who assisted their people through voluntary child welfare work, Martha provided the best care in southern Wairarapa from the 1930s to the 1960s.