Mr and Mrs Archibald Barr (née Sarah Hepburn)

Archibald Barr, born in 1821, was a Glasgow native who became the first chief postmaster for Otago. His wife, Sarah Hepburn, was born at Kirkcaldy, Scotland in 1837, and travelled to New Zealand with her family on the Poictiers when she was 12.  Archibald had arrived in Otago on the Mariner the year before, in 1849.  He worked with his older brother James to develop a 10-acre block of land at Halfway Bush.  James Barr was Otago’s first historian and later wrote about the brothers’ first year of work at Halfway Bush as a time of pioneering adventure: ‘I can safely say that my first year in Otago was truly the happiest … I have ever spent.’

Archibald married his first wife, Mary Dick, while living at Halfway Bush. He then sold this property and moved to New South Wales, where he was appointed assistant clerk in the Audit Office of the Treasury Department .  In 1856 he returned to Dunedin where Mary died a few months later.  The next year Archibald became the clerk for the Customs and Post Office in Dunedin and started working his way up the organisation.   He married Sarah Hepburn the year following this appointment.  She was the eldest daughter of George Hepburn, one of the leading settlers in the district whose diaries and letters tell us much about life in pioneer Dunedin.  Together Archibald and Sarah went on to have two sons and five daughters, though one daughter did not survive infancy.

With the discovery of gold in Otago in 1861, the Post Office experienced an immense increase in workload.  At one point during this time Archibald did not leave the office for three days, not even for meals.  Instead, he stole a few hours of sleep per night upon the piles of newspapers heaped on the ground.  The gold rushes also demanded a huge expansion in the network of post office branches and Archibald took it upon himself to check out each district, travelling long distances across country to work out the best routes for mail and locations for post offices.  Archibald held his position as chief postmaster for Otago for 31 years, retiring in 1888. During that time, he is noted as only ever asking for one holiday, a testament to his hard-working character and devotion to duty.

Archibald died in 1898, aged 76, and a few years later Sarah moved to Oamaru, where she lived until her death in 1908, aged 72.