Eunice Hester Percy and William Cleland
After studying the lives of the three "senior" lines of the family - the "Petone" Percies, the Renalls and the "Wairarapa" Percies - we now arrive at the youngest of the family.
Eunice (Esther) was aged six or seven when she arrived in New Zealand (she is listed in the 1841 Census for Sherborne aged six). Of her early life at home we know nothing. She only enters the record in August 1863 when she married William Cleland at Petone.
William was the son of Hugh and Margaret Cleland who arrived in New Zealand in 1857 aboard the "Mariner" with their five children - William, Robert, Jane, Matilda and Albert.
Hugh had been a captain in the British Army. Born at Killyleagh, County Down, Ireland, some 30 kilometres southeast of Belfast, he married Margaret Anderson at Manchester Cathedral in 1837. He was to serve both in the Crimean War and at Gibraltar where his son William was born.
Once in New Zealand Hugh became deeply involved with the Volunteer Militia in Lower Hutt. He also entered into the business scene and opened a general store in High Street, Lower Hutt, in 1860. Hugh and Robert, his son, operated this store. William was to open a store near Taita.
Hugh died after falling off his horse on the Wairarapa side of the Rimutuka Hill in 1874. Margaret died in 1890. They are buried at St James Church, Lower Hutt. We recall that the original St James Church had been built by Joseph Percy and Son, William's in laws in 1848.
The marriage of William and "Esther" did not produce any children. Esther died in 1914, William three years later in 1917.
After his mother's death, Robert Cleland was to move to the Taranaki but some of his "family" have since returned to the Lower Hutt. Keith Cleland, his great grandson, now lives only a few hundred metres from Percy Reserve.