The Frenchman came to New Zealand in the early days of the Central Otago gold rush, where he left his marks which can still be seen all around Clyde today.
Mr Faisandier’s great-granddaughter Margaret Garvie was in Dunedin yesterday to give his letters home to the Hocken Library archives for safekeeping.
The letters provided great historical insight into the life of the early miners during the gold rush.
They also provided a surprising revelation to her family about why he ended up in New Zealand.
"He came here under a bit of a cloud which we had never known about.
"We were told he left his home in southern France [near Lyon] at the age of 18, because he had a fight with his mother and he didn’t like the coffee.
"We’ve learnt from the letters that he was conscripted to Napoleon III’s [Crimean] war, and he ran.
"It was quite a shameful thing that he did."
He fled to Switzerland before joining a railway company and sailing to Melbourne, Australia, where he worked on the city’s railways.
He and the other workers were promised great things by the railway company, but they never delivered on those promises, and industrial disputes broke out.
So he sailed to Dunedin in 1862, and from there, he went to the Central Otago goldfields to seek his fortune, Mrs Garvie said.
"The letters talk very much about gold mining, how hard it was for him here, the struggle.
"In one of his letters, he said he couldn’t even get wood to start a fire to heat his coffee.
"He made money, he lost money, he got gold, he lost gold."
"He was a very capable and industrious person, so he always found something to do.
"He helped build the bridge at Clyde, he bought property at Clyde, he [built] a magnificent house in Clyde."
He was also a musician and very community-focused — he ran many of the local dances, weddings and other social gatherings.
"He was very much a community man in Clyde, but the letters never alluded to that."
He also never wrote about his wife and five children, Mrs Garvie said.
"That was, I think, because of the shame that he felt about running from his conscription.
"His mother was a widow. She would have got a pension if he had gone into the war.
"To me, he lived a life where he was forever apologising to her.
"It was always, ‘I love you, you’re always in my heart, I’m going to come home and see you, please come and see me’."
He died in Clyde in 1916, without ever returning to France.
Mrs Garvie and other family members were at the Hocken Library yesterday to present the original letters in French, which have also been translated into English.
Hocken Library archives head curator Anna Blackman said they would be available for researchers and the public to consult.
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