John Blackman The Story of My Life

John Blackman
The Story of My Life

This was published in 1984 by Ray Turner.

John Blackman wrote this autobiography during 1886 and 1887, some six years before his death in Auckland in June 1893. When visiting Dunedin in 1981, I was shown the hand-written list of contents of “The Story of My Life” and also two pages which were thought to be all that had survived. The contents interested me because John Blackman’s sister, Ann (Mrs John Waymouth), was my great great grandmother, and hence John Blackman’s ancestors were mine also. I sent a letter to each of the eight children of John’s son, Percy James Blackman,

enclosing a list of contents, and asked if chapters, or even odd pages, were in their possession. By August 1982 I had obtained photo-copies of all but one or two pages of the autobiography and set about typing.
I have typed the work without alteration apart from putting paragraph headings at the head of paragraphs rather than part way through the text and I have broken very long paragraphs into shorter ones for easer of reading. The author probably intended the newspaper clippings to be re-typed,

but they are included to indicate those passages which have already been published elsewhere (although where is not noted by the author). I have added a short index.

It should be remembered that I have typed this work from photo-copies of script hand-whiting and in some cases words have been guessed because they have been too faint to read or missed off the edge of the copy altogether. A question mark denotes where I could not decipher a word.

Although my copy is imperfect in many ways, I consider that it is important that this work is distributed so that anyone who is interested in the 19th century can become aware of this hitherto unpublished autobiography.

R.J.Turner,
43 Wapiti Avenue, Epsom, Auckland, New Zealand
2 March 1984

Front cover	Heading	Forword	Contents 1	Contents 2	Contents 3	Contents 4	Index 1	Index 2	Index 3	Illustrations	Back cover
Page 1	Page 2	Page 3	Page 4	Page 5	Page 6	Page 7	Page 8	Page 9	Page 10	Page 11	Page 12
Page 13	Page 14	Page 15	Page 16	Page 17	Page 18	Page 19	Page 20	Page 21	Page 22	Page 23	Page 24
Page 25	Page 26	Page 27	Page 28	Page 29	Page 30	Page 31	Page 32	Page 33	Page 34	Page 35	Page 36
Page 37	Page 38	Page 39	Page 40	Page 41	Page 42	Page 43	Page 44	Page 45	Page 46	Page 47	Page 48
Page 49	Page 50	Page 51	Page 52	Page 53	Page 54	Page 55	Page 56	Page 57	Page 58	Page 58	Page 60
Page 61	Page 62	Page 63	Page 64	Page 65	Page 66	Page 67	Page 68	Page 69	Page 70	Page 71	Page 72
Page 73	Page 74	Page 75	Page 76	Page 77	Page 78	Page 79	Page 80	Page 81	Page 82	Page 83	Page 84
Page 85	Page 86	Page 87	Page 88	Page 89	Page 90	Page 91	Page 92	Page 93	Page 94	Page 95	Page 96
Page 97	Page 98	Page 99	Page 100	Page 101	Page 102	Page 103	Page 104	Page 105	Page 106	Page 107	Page 108
Page 109	Page 110	Page 111	Page 112	Page 113	Page 114	Page 115	Page 116	Page 117	Page 118	Page 119	Page 120
Page 121	Page 122	Page 123	Page 124	Page 125	Page 126	Page 127	Page 128	Page 129	Page 130	Page 131	Page 132
Page 133	Page 134	Page 135	Page 136	Page 137	Page 138	Page 139	Page 140	Page 141	Page 142	Page 143	Page 144
Page 145	Page 146	Page 147	Page 148	Page 149	Page 150	Page 151	Page 152	Page 153	Page 154	Page 155	Page 156
Page 157	Page 158	Page 159	Page 160	Page 161	Page 162	Page 163	Page 164	Page 165	Page 166	Page 167	Page 168
Page 169	Page 170	Page 171	Page 172	Page 173	Page 174	Page 175	Page 176	Page 177	Page 178	Page 179	Page 180
Page 181	Page 182	Page 183	Page 184	Page 185	Page 186	Page 187	Page 188	Page 189	Page 190	THE END This is a photo of the Author, John Blackman. The photographer was his wife, Elizabeth Blackman, formerly Elizabeth Pulman, nee Chadd.	Page 192