Harriet Place

Running off Ōmata Road in Spotswood, Harriet Place was named in the 1960s after Harriet Wood, the mother of the subdivider who owned the property on which the street was formed.

Harriet Ann Fisher was born in Woodville in 1892, the daughter of John Fisher and his wife Ann. The youngest of ten, she married Charles Alfred Percy Wood (who was always known as Percy) in 1910 and the couple had ten children of their own: Ruby, John, Naomi, Elsie, Dolly, Frederick, Joyce, Mary, Barbara and Betty.

The Woods owned most of the land from Barrett Road to Blagdon but after Percy died in 1964, Harriet sold part of the family farm to their son Frederick, known as Donny. It was Donny who subdivided the portion of the property that would become Harriet Place. Interestingly, he also requested that a second street be named for his family but his handwritten letter was apparently misread by somebody at the council and Wood Place became Hood Place, with the rationale that there was a Hood Street in the old Plymouth back in England.

Harriet Wood died on 26 April 1972 and is buried in Awanui Cemetery.

Other Harriets in local history include an earlier Harriet Wood, the last surviving passenger of the Plymouth Company ship Timandra. She travelled with her parents William and Harriet Harrison and her older brother, arriving in Taranaki from England in 1842. Harriet married Thomas Wood in New Plymouth in 1860 and died in 1929 aged 89.

There was also a Harriet Wood on the ship Amelia Thompson, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth, and yet another Harriet arrived on the Oriental in November 1841. Ten-year-old Harriet Foreman sailed with her father Richard, stepmother Susanna and five siblings. At the age of 16 this Harriet had an affair with Harcourt Aubrey, ten years her senior, and the couple had an illegitimate son. Aubrey was forced to pay two shillings a week for the child’s maintenance, quite a scandal in 1847. Harriet later married William Old, who raised the boy as his own.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.