St Pauls Papanui Cemetery - Christchurch City Libraries

In August 1850 Duncan purchased land in the Canterbury Settlement, he and his wife
emigrating on the Randolph. Duncan selected Rural Section 92, 50 acres, at Decanter
Bay, Banks Peninsula, an area which could then be reached only by water.
Matters went hard with him and, during some years of uncongenial work, the
prospect of success was by no means promising …The young lawyer was
easily persuaded by his friends that he was wasting his time in the wilds of the
bush and, accordingly, about the year 1856, he returned to Lyttelton and
resumed the practice of his profession.
Duncan crossed the Port Hills. Sir Thomas Tancred, who was planning to visit
England, leased to him 50 acres and a house. The property commenced … at a
point in the North Road distant about one mile, 54 and a half chain from
Christchurch Market Place [Victoria Square] … following the said road
northerly twelve and a half chains and running back in a rectangular block 40
chains.’
In 1865 Tancred sold the property to the lessee for 2500 pounds. Duncan made the
first additions to the original buildings including ‘the Lodge’ on the mound adjacent
to the driveway. He named the property ‘Strowan’ after his brother-in-law’s estate
near Crieff in Perthshire, Scotland. This Scottish ‘Strowan’ ‘is derived from a learned
and brave ecclesiastic, St. Rowan, who lived about the middle of the seventh century.’
Duncan became Provincial Council representative for Akaroa (although he did not
live there) and, later, for Avon. He supported W. S. Moorhouse and his plans to have
a Port Hills tunnel and Canterbury-wide railway system. Although Provincial
Solicitor under ‘Railway Billy’ and a supporter of the Superintendent’s policies,
Duncan ‘never really seemed to take much interest in matters’. He was, however, ‘a
good battler … when soused’. He was Provincial Solicitor when he and William
Thomson were discovered supposedly admiring the beauty of the Waimakariri at
sunset but, in reality, viewing the infamous prize fight.
James Edward FitzGerald took a dim view of Duncan’s political views. When, in
1868, there was a public breakfast for the visitors, Lord Lyttelton and Henry Selfe
Selfe, FitzGerald said of Duncan: “Before me I have my dearest friend and one of my
strongest enemies”.
Duncan had his own business but, at various times, took into partnership Joshua
Strange Williams (who left to became a judge in Otago); and then Messrs. Jameson,
Cotterill and J. C. Martin. The firm survives as Duncan, Cotterill and Co.
A ‘homely, unpretentious man of exceeding kindness and good nature’, Duncan
‘frequently provided from his own pocket ‘the money to keep unfortunate clients from
imprisonment for debt. On the voyage from England, he was described as ‘handsome’,
of ‘free and easy speech’, possessed of brown hair, a ‘magnificent brown beard’ and
excelling in agility and muscular strength. In later years Duncan had ‘slightly
stooping carriage … lined features and … whitened hair’.
St. Paul’s Papanui Cemetery
2007
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