OTAGO PIONEER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 206, 1 September 1938, Page 16

OTAGO PIONEER.

DEATH IN WELLINGTON.

FORMES AUCKLAND RESIDENT.

One of the last of the pioneers who were present when the history of Dunedin began, Mrs. Mary Stewart, has died in Wellington at the age of 92. She was less than a year old when, in the autumn of 1848, she was carried ashore from the sailing ship Philip Laing, second arrival of Otago'e two pioneer vessels.

It was after seven years of tedious and discouraging negotiations and delays in the Homeland that a scheme was formulated to establish a Free Kirk settlement in New Zealand. In the •tormy winter of 1847 two ships left Home—the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing. On the Philip Laing was a tall, austere clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Burns, a cousin of Robert Burns, the poet, and among the 247 migrant Scots was a Glasgow cabinetmaker, Duncan Sinclair, his wife and newly-born daughter. Of the 93 children on board that ship, over 90 are now dead. Only by what her parents told her was Mrs. Stewart to know of that passage. The Rev. Thomas Burns ruled the ship with an iron hand. No dancing or merrymaking was there to while aw%y tiresome hours in the doldrums, nor was any voice raised in song except to the tune of hymn or psalm. Twice daily, services were held for all hands. The vessel reached port on April 15, 1848, after 140 days at sea, the John Wickliffe being already in port. Mrs. Stewart's first clear recollection was of playing with childhood friends in the thick bush which rolled over the hills of the infant city. Her parents had built a crude wattle and daub cottage, the usual European dwelling of that time. Where it stood is now the heart of Dunedin city. A many-storeyed building is in its place. Later her. parents moved to Port Chalmers, where Mr. Sinclair was practising his trade. It wae there that Mary Sinclair grew to womanhood. In 1874 she married another Scots immigrant, John Stewart, of Fifeshire. They came to live in Auckland, where Mr. Stewart died in 1915.

About four yeare ago Mrs. Stewart went to live with her daughter in Wellington. She has two adult sons, both living in Sydney. It waa a great day for Mrs. Stewart when two years ago her eldest son paid her the first visit he had made in 26 years. Though into her single lifetime had been crowded practically the whole of New Zealand history Mrs. Stewart always held that hers had been a quiet life. Up to the time of her death she bad always been more concerned with the things of to-day than with memories of childhood as a pioneer in a young and savage land.