An ambush brings family tragedy


Almost midway between Papakura and Waiuku, Glenbrook Road dips down to cross a bridge over the upper reaches of the Taihiki River, a southern inlet of Auckland’s Manukau Harbour. On the Papakura side of the bridge, and just a few steps down from the roadside, a white picket fence surrounds a small cemetery. Of the handful of early settlers named on the memorial stone plaque, Private Jas (James) Dromgool, Mauku Forest Rifles, was the older brother of Charles Dromgool, my maternal grandfather’s father. (The plaque incorrectly gives James’s death as September 1863: it should be November 1863).


Taihiki River bridge, on Glenbrook Road, about 15km east of Waiuku and about 2km west of the Kingseat-Patumahoe roundabout. November 2018.

James Dromgool, born in Co Louth, Ireland in July 1843, was the eldest child of John and Susan Dromgool. When John and Susan and their eight children (Anne had died as an infant in 1852) arrived in Auckland on the SHALIMAR in December 1859, Susan was seven months pregnant with their 10th child. It seems likely that the family, or at least Susan and the younger children, remained in Onehunga until after Elizabeth was born on 25th February 1860. John took up farming and the family’s first New Zealand home was at Glenbrook. It would have been a tough life and undoubtedly James and Charles (born 1845) made a rapid transition from boys to men. Another child, Lucy, was born in December 1861 and Susan was pregnant again by early 1863. As tension increased between Maori and settlers in late 1863, the Dromgools and their neighbours would have felt very acutely the isolation and vulnerability of their farms. All over the district, the decision was made to abandon farms until the war was over. At Mauku Landing, while a stockade was being built, settlers helped turn The Grange, Major Speedy’s home, into an emergency garrison where women and children could shelter while waiting for the boat that would take them across the Manukau Harbour to relative safety in Onehunga. The Grange was loop-holed and the menfolk took turns at keeping guard day and night.
John and Susan and were in Onehunga with their family when Thomas was born on 26th August. In registering Thomas’s birth, John is described as ‘farmer of Onehunga’ but this almost certainly refers to the farm at Glenbrook. James and Charles had either remained in Glenbrook or later returned home to defend their farm. Either way, on 3rd November, James and another volunteer in the Mauku Rifles left the cottage where the volunteers were billeted, near Major Speedy’s house and the stockade, to get in some horses. The two men – the other was Corporal Felix McGuire – were only about 500 metres from the stockade when they were shot at in a daring ambush. Corporal McGuire was able to ride back to the cottage for help. However, James Dromgool fell from his horse, mortally wounded, and died at the scene. His attackers were never conclusively identified. On 4th November The Daily Southern Cross published a grim account of the tragedy under the headline ‘Another Brutal Murder by the Rebels’. The name that appears in the article, Droomgould, is one of the many variations of my mother’s family’s surname.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DSC18631104.2.15?end_date=31-12-1863&items_per_page=100&query=Droomgould&start_date=01-01-1863&title=DSC&type=ARTICLE
With James’s death, Susan must really have wondered why they had ever left Ireland. Within a month, aged 40, Susan died: the family had been in New Zealand just on 4 years. She is buried in the old Catholic cemetery in Church Street, Onehunga.
Source: Dromgool Family Reunion Book, 1986, compiled and written by Laura (Dromgool) Boswell, with reference to “The New Zealand Wars: a History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period: Volume 1 (1845-64)” by James Cowan.
My thanks also to Paul at Patumahoe and Waiuku Information Centre staff for very clear instructions on how to find the cemetery.
Please get in touch if, like me, you are descended from any of the SHALIMAR’s 1859 Liverpool to Auckland passengers.

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