Christensen family of Manawatu, NZ

Richard Nickolay ('Dick') Christensen

Dick Christensen was born on 11 December 1873, at Stoney Creek. He started at Stoney Creek School on 28 October 1879 and left on 4 August 1884, having achieved his Standard Two (Year Four) Certificate. He does not appear to have gone to another school and presumably was kept home to work thereafter. Presumably he stayed with his father after Marie died in March 1885.

On 6 February 1888, four years after Dick left the school, his future wife, Anna Lucinsky, started there as Pupil No. 307. In 1977, at the age of 100, she was the oldest pupil present at the school's centennial celebrations. Her family was from Bohemia and had arrived in New Zealand earlier in the 1870s (c1874-6). At first they had lived at Carnarvon (between Himatangi and Sanson), before moving to a property at the intersection of Kelvin Grove Road and Roberts Line. She and her brother had to walk the quite considerable distance from their home to the old school site - which probably took around an hour each way. Possibly they also met up with Anna's future sister-in-law, Lydia Christsensen-Dahlstrom, who lived only a few hundred metres away from the Lucinsky property, and who had started at the school only a few days earlier (as Pupil No. 304) After about eighteen months, the Lucinsky family moved to Himatangi.

In due course Dick and Anna married and for a while they lived at Pohangina, where their eldest daughter, Hilda, was born. Then they moved to Cheltenham, where another eleven children were born.

Dick died at Palmerston North on 17 November 1940.

These are Mr and Mrs Lucinsky, parents of Richard's wife Anna.

Last updated 9/5/2001