These young Marsters are the latest in a family line which stretches back nearly 200 years.  They're part of a fascinating family saga, which begins in rural England and ends (or rather still continues) on one of the most isolated islands in the world.  And along the way, there are multiple wives, 17 children, a murder attempt and an ignominious death for the founding father of this unique community.

William Marsters was born Richard Masters (with no R in the middle of his surname) in 1831 (we don't know his exact date of birth, but he was baptised on 6 November of that year). 

He was the second child of John Masters (1809-1880) and Ann Armstrong (1802-1873)  who married in the ancient church of St. Mary deCastro near to Leicester Castle on 6 November, 1827.  (Ann's name appears in earlier parish records as Armston).  His place of birth was the parish of Misterton in the Lutterworth district of Leicestershire.   It also helps to explain why one of the islets in the Palmerston lagoon is called Leicester Bank.
 
Author's note:  This information is based on English parish records. (no birth certificates exist as this was before a law was passed in England and Wales making registration compulsory).   Many writers have repeated a fallacy that William was born in Gloucestershire.  The year of his birth is also often wrongly recorded as 1821. 

Marsters second wife on Palmerston, Tepou Tinioi was NOT a sister but a cousin of his first, as was his third wife, Matavia.   Tepou bore him six children.   The eldest, Marion, drowned at sea when the 'Araura' was lost off Aitutaki.  Matavia was first married to a Jean Baptiste Fernadez (or Fernandos) who jumped his whaling ship at Manuae to join Marsters who was on the island at the time and accompanied Marsters back to Palmerston. 

Fernandez and Matavia had one son of their own, Mahuta, and three other children who are thought to have been William's because they were fair skinned, whereas Fernandez is said to have been a dark skinned man, probably from Goa.   Fernandez had a big row with Marsters about the parentage and subsequently abandoned Matavi.  He drowned on 5th March, 1898 (not 1895 as is often reported) after falling overboard from the schooner, Torea which had just set sail from Rarotonga, bound for Atiu.  Some reports say he was drunk...others that he was very infirm and hardly able to walk.

Matavia and Marsters married and she gave him a total of seven children.   It's also significant that these births were recorded as MaRsters rather than Masters...the first official record of the name being spelled with the R in the middle. 

Most reports say William had only three (Palmerston) wives, but William's great great granddaughter, Yolande Browne, who herself has researched the family tree, has confirmed for me that there was definitely a fourth.   She was called Arehata and the couple had one daughter, Ritia.  She married a Penrhyn trader called William Ford who, I'm was told, was the brother of Henry Ford (pictured right) - founder of America's  Ford Motor Company and creator of the famous Model T.   Sadly, this is not correct.  However, Yolande's confirmation is very significant.  Previously, the only reference to the fourth wife was in the meticulously researched book 'Sisters in the Sun' by A.S. Helm and W.H. Percival.

This house remains a testament to the skills, hard work and commitment of William Marsters to making Palmerston his home.  It's built from timbers from three wrecked ships, but, mainly from those of the vessel Annie Laurie which foundered on the reef soon after he arrived on the island.    William built several other houses too.

English missionary William Wyatt Gill spent most of his adult life in the Cook Islands.  A meeting with Marsters is recalled in his book "Jottings from the Pacific", published in London in 1885 (my own precious personal copy is pictured left).  It's the only known published contemporary account of a meeting and as such it's a unique insight into Marsters, the man. 

Gill says William was "one of those waifs so common in the Pacific" who had decided to settle on the island after years of wandering among the Line Islands (a group of 11 atolls and low coral islands in the central Pacific about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii).    He describes him as  "a short, well set  man of about 60 years; very active, but with an uneasy expression of countenance".

We learn from Gill that William planted 80,000 "cocoa-nuts" and that bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) was collected for the Chinese market.   The missionary is also responsible for the first church being built on Palmerston.  He refers to "a private conference" that he had with Marsters:   "He listened attentively to what I said, and engaged to give sufficient wood for the erection of a little church."

We also learn that William always carried a loaded revolver with him.   Gill explains: "A few years ago a plot was laid to kill Marsters whilst asleep and to drown his children in the lagoon.  The women were engaged in the plot....This may have accounted for the presence of two large fierce dogs.  Marsters world is law, and must be implicitly obeyed".

And he compares the founding father of Palmerston to Alexander Selkirk, the real life Robinson Crusoe who inspired the famous story by Daniel Defoe.  "Monarch of all he surveys, His right there is none to dispute". 

All the published writings to date say William ran away to sea when he was 18, but Anne Elizabeth's birth certificate proves that can't be true.   He would have been at least 22, and that assumes he fled almost immediately after the birth of his second child.   So far, I have also been unable to confirm why he left England.  One report in the UK's 'Daily Mirror' newspaper in 1959 says he had a fierce row with his father about going off to seek his fortune in the California gold rush.  There is no other source to corroborate this, but it makes sense.  Given that William had just become a father for the second time, you can understand why Masters senior would have lost his temper.

Great great grand-daughter, Yolande Browne (descended from William and his first wife) says William was accompanied by three other boys when he left.   He subsequently earned a living on  the whaling ships which frequented the Bay of Islands in New Zealand.  But around 1859, he left his vessel and after what one report describes as "various ups and downs", he reached Tahiti.  Sea stories and songs of the sea attracted him to the life, according to his descendants.

One such sea song is still sung today on Palmerston..."Blow the winds I O/To the Logan I will go/To live no more on England shore.  And let the music play/I'm off for the morning train/To cross the railway road/I am a rose to me own true love/Ten thousand miles away"

According to the Marsters family, William worked alongside men like this one panning for a possible fortune in the California gold rush.  The Rev. Bill Marsters, in a letter of 1998, says the patriarch "came away with a find of three jars or jimmy-johns of gold nuggets". 

If that's true, it's not clear why he ended up destitute after returning to sea.  Several documents say he jumped ship at at Penrhyn (also known as Tongareva) in the Northern Cook Islands.  Another account from 1888, however, has Marsters himself telling visitors from a passing vessel that he ran away from the British barque, 'Rifleman' in Tahiti.  The dates don't add up either...even if William fled England as soon as he knew his wife was pregnant with their second child, he wouldn't have reached California in time for the gold rush which ended in 1852.  

American, John Hart was Master of the schooner, 'Horai' which took William to Palmerston.  The vessel was owned by Scotsman, John Brander who was a trader in Tahiti.   Brander told Hart to relieve Sweet of his role as "caretaker or Manager of Palmerston" - apparently, Sweet was fed up with the job - and find another man to take his place.  En route, Hart called in at Manuae (or Hervey Island as it was called at the time) and found Masters there. 

It's conceivable that Marsters knew Brander and Sweet as, according to one newspaper report albeit many years later,  he "entered into relations with some of the traders" while he was in Tahiti, and Brander was a prominent figure.   If that's the case, it may be no coincidence that Sweet found Marsters on Manuae but actually sought him out.  However, there is no written evidence this was the case.

The woman who accompanied William to Palmerston was the first of four Palmerston wives and was of noble parentage.  Akakaingaro (Sarah) was from the royal family in Penrhyn.  He married heer in Tahiti.  She was the child of Tehaharua Parerima, a great chief from Tetautua whose own wife,  Kaneakore was the daughter of another royal chief  of Omoka and a descendant of the famous warrior chief Te-Kairangi.

Sarah gave William nine children.  But tragedy struck the first two - Anne was drowned in the Vai Sinane River in Samoa at the age of 2, and Elizabeth died on Manuae when she was only one year old.  The places where they died confirm other writings which say that at this time, William was visiting other parts of the Cook Islands and the central South Pacific, although there don't seem to be any records of exactly where he went. 

Marsters first son was born in 1860 and called Joel (his brother's name).   Other writings say the eldest son was William who would subsequently succeed his father as head of the island, but his year of birth is given as 1862.  This is also confirmed elsewhere in academic research.  The other children in order of birth were James (died 1920), Aaron (died on Palmerston, aged 6 months), Elizabeth Saretuaroa Akiakirau - commonly referred to by William as "one girl" -  (born 1866), Kuras (born 1898) and Teraia (1881-1932). 

In a statement sworn at the British Consulate in Papeete, Tahiti on 4th February, 1891,  he says: "When I took Wm Masters off Hervey Island, he was entirely destitute and was highly pleased to accept the positon I offered him."   And he also confirms that William was not alone when he was taken to Palmerston.  

"I conveyed him, his woman, her sister and one or two children to Palmerston Island, landed them on 8th July <1863>, and made a written ageement with him in which it stated that he, Wm Masters, was to hold possession of the said Palmerston Island, for, and on behalf of Mr John Brander....and his renumeration for so doing was to be a share of the produce raised on the island".   (From the Logbook of the Schooner 'Horai' )

There was already a small community there.   Hart took 18 men and women back to Rarotonga with him, but left on the island with William a man and two women from Penrhyn, a white man and his son and some others who he describes as "Atiu natives".

We get a further insight into Marsters, the man in the definitive study of the Palmerston language which was undertaken in 1992 by one of the world's leading linguists. 

Sabine Ehrhart-Kneher writes:  "It seems that William Marsters tired to prevent his wives from speaking Maori.   He was a very distrustful person and he did not want them to communicate in a language he could not (fully) understand.  He obliged his children - and later on, his grandchildren - to speak English all the time...According to witnesses,  Marsters influence was greater than the Bible on what is known to be a religious island." 

And I have recently turned up another viewpoint in a book of 1921 ('Cruise of the Dream Ship' by Ralph Stock).  The author pays tribute to the standards William laid down from the outset.  He writes; "That they were sound standards is evidenced by the people of Palmerston to-day.  They read, write and speak English, this last with an accent vaguely reminiscent of the south-wet of England. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest to a degree little short of startling..."

Much has been written about William's wives on Palmerston (see below), but few realise he was already married when he arrived on the island.   On 10 November, 1851,  at the age of 20, he married in Misterton 18 year old Charlotte Farmer from the nearby hamlet of Walcote (spelled Walcot at the time).   They had two children,  Richard (or John Richard according to census records) who was born about January, 1852, and Anne Elizabeth who was born on 5th December, 1853.  The records which confirm all this mean also that Charlotte was heavily pregnant at the time of her marriage.  (Ann Elizabeth's birth certificate also reveals that Charlotte was illiterate...instead of signing the certificate, she marks it with an 'x')

It's debatable whether William committed polygamy when he married his Palmerston wives.  No one owned the island at the time, so it was not subject to the law of any country.   That said, he married the first of those wives in Tahiti which was under British rule at the time and bigamy has been a crime under UK law since the 17th century.

It's a remarkable structure, described in detail in a New Zealand newspaper of 1894:  "The timber, excepting being cleaned and in some instances planed, was used just as it came from the wreck.  The result is that he has rafters 24 by 24 ; ridgepoles, 12 by 12; uprights, 18 by 12 and 18 by 24 ; door posts, 24 by 24; while the boarding of the houses and the flooring are of 12 by 4 and 4 by 3, resting on timbers 18 by 12 and other light pieces of timber. The doorsteps are of 18 by 12 and 20 and 25 feet long. The nails used in the houses are ship's bolts."   Marsters said he only only wanted to build houses once!

Towards the end of 1898, disaster struck Palmerston.  The thousands of coconut trees William had planted were struck by blight.  And just a few months later the man who had built the island into a home for his ever growing family died of malnutrition.

Sailors on the  American barque, Empire that called into the island on 7th February, 1900 were told by one of his sons that he died about six months earlier "from lack of proper food" and the remaining 50 inhabitants of Palmerston were starving.  Captain Knacke provided them with some supplies and promised to report their desperate condition to the authorities on Rarotonga. 

But it was an ignominious end to an era and for a man who founded a dynasty which still continues to this day.

When you're writing - or in this case re-writing history - it's important to make sure the facts are right.  This is particularly challenging with the Marsters story because so much fact is intertwined with family folklore.   I'm not saying the family stories are false, but we all know how much a story can change in the telling especially over generations.  Wherever possible, I have followed my journalistic tenet and looked for at least two separate sources, one of which is supported by documentary evidence..  Not all writers have been as meticulous which is why I believe this is the definitive Marsters story.  

There are many loose ends which you may be able to help tie up.   If you have any additional information, please email me and, with your permission, I will share that through this website.  Copies of photographs and documents relating to early family members would be especially welcome too.   Click here for a list of acknowledgements and sources.  And remember this is still research in progress for a book which I hope will finally separate fact from fiction.    For detailed acknowlegements, please click here (opens in new window or tab).