Our roots.
Our people.
Our stories.
The Willetts–McAven family, remembered through the photographs, letters and stories we’ve kept along the way.
Every life, a story.
Across oceans and generations, these are the lives that shaped our family.
Huia’s story
A life at sea, two years in Chile, and a home in New Zealand.
Read the story
Mavis’s story
Music, family, and a lifetime on Auckland’s North Shore.
Read the story
John & Annie
The family behind Mavis’s Whanganui childhood.
Read the story
Joseph & Beatrice
From England to a new life in New Zealand.
Read the story
A long way
from home.
Stranded in Chile, Huia wrote home to his mother while working in the salt mines. His letters bring a remarkable chapter of our family history to life.
Lovingly typed up by his first-born daughter, Heather McAven, around 1990.
Read Huia’s lettersA place to keep
our memories.
This Family Tree website has been built to commemorate the passing of my NZ parents, Mavis and Huia McAven. It contains ancestral charts, from both Huias side and Mavis Willetts side. It also contains a photo gallery, and historical stories from their perspective. It contains Huia’s now famous letters to his mother, when he got dumped in Chile and was stuck for two years working in Salt Mines before another boat arrived to rescue him. These hand-written letters of the 1920’s were lovingly typed up by his first born daughter, Heather McAven around 1990.
I built this website based upon all the photos and documents our family kept throughout the years until this time of writing. Thanks to all my family and relatives who kindly provided accurate information to make the content as complete as possible.
Get in touch with GillianA new chapter.
A new country.
My maternal great-grandparents arrived in Hokitika in 1875 aboard the Waitangi.
Waitangi was an iron-hulled, full-rigged sailing ship (or clipper ship). Built in 1874 as a passenger and cargo vessel for the New Zealand Shipping Company to operate in the UK–NZ trade.
Trace the Willetts family
