Birth

Enlistment Information

Military Service

Embarkation Information

Military Awards

Death

Biographical Notes

Henry Albert Symes (junior) was the eldest child of Henry Albert (senior) and Grace Montgomery (née Wright) Symes. Henry Albert was known as Ab, possibly to distinguish him from his father who had the same name. Ab's mother was a school teacher and his father was an engineer, inventor, onetime mayor of Alexandra, and and founder of the Alexandra Herald newspaper. Ab was educated at the Alexandra Public School and Macandrew Bay School, Dunedin, going on to Dunedin Technical Classes.

A niece, Grace Anne (Nan) Bray (nee Grant), wrote the following notes about Ab:

“Henry Albert (“Ab”): Born February, the 7th 1892. Probably educated at Alexandra and Hamilton South and perhaps later in Dunedin.

For a while he worked on the railways in Dunedin and then he joined the Otago Mounted Regiment during the 1st World War. First went to Gallipoli [to be confirmed] and then to France.”

On his return from the war Lance-Corporal Symes was accorded a welcome home by the Ashwick Flat Patriotic Entertainment Committee.

His niece also wrote:

“After the war he came back to [his mother's] at Ashwick Flat and I think for a while had a Rehabilitation Farm near Raincliff but didn’t succeed at this. Later he did farm work and fencing and then joined his brother Vic [Vincent] gold prospecting at Moonlight near Blackball on the West Coast. I doubt if they ever made much money through those slump years of the 1930s. He came back to Fairlie about 1939 or 1940 and lived with his mother.

He used to look after places when the owners were away on holiday, especially as in those days before refrigerators all farms had cows to be milked and then there were dogs to feed and stock to shift. I think he was well trusted by farmers who had him to do this. Latterly he lived in a two-roomed hut in Regent Street in Fairlie, where he had a good section for a garden. He was a clever man, who in these days would have perhaps had a university education.

In the 1920s, he and his brother Vic invented, and patented, a useful coupling device in fencing and Ab went to Australia to have it patented [it was also patented in the U.S. and New Zealand]. It was produced in New Zealand. I don’t think he and Vic made any money from it though.

Ab never married.

He died on December the 11th, 1961, and his funeral service was well attended at St Columba’s Church in Fairlie. Afterwards Mrs Frances Braddock, whose mother was his first cousin (Margaret Smith, later Mrs Harry Williams), provided afternoon tea at her home in Fairlie.

He is buried in the Fairlie Cemetery not far from my parents’ grave, with a returned serviceman’s head-stone on the grave. He was aged 69 years.”

Henry's brother, Vincent Symes, served in World War I and World War II.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [28 October 2019]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [28 October 2019]; Fairlie Cemetery headstone transcription [30 October 2019]; Timaru Herald, 14 May 1919 (Papers Past) [15 May 2014]; SCRoll web submissions by J Bray, 22 & 23 October 2024

External Links

Related Documents

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Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG; Tony Rippin, South Canterbury Museum

Currently Assigned to

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