OBITUARY.

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 84, 3 January 1929, Page 5

OBITUARY.

Believed to be the first white child born in the South Island, and having the distinction of being the first white child born in the Canterbury province, Mrs. Jeannie Orton died at her home, Pleasant Point, near Timaru, on Christmas Day. Mrs. Orton would have celebrated her Ssth birthday in a fortnight. Her father, Mr. Samuel Manson, was one of the'little band who left the North Island with the Deans brothers in the early ’4o’s, to settle on the comparatively unknown plains of Canterbury. His daughter, Jeannie, was born on January 7, 1844, in a hut on the Deans estate, Riccarton. The hut in which she was born was ths first dwelling to be erected in the province. In 1865 Jeannie Manson married Reginald Orton, at Governor’s Bay. Mr. and Mrs. Orton first settled on a farm near Horse Shoe Lake, but later took up land at Pleasant Point. Mrs. Orton had lived in that district ever since. Her husband was drowned in 1895 while fording the hooded Opihi River. Mr. and Mrs. Ortbri had 11 children, and two sons and six daughters are still living. There ate 30 grandchildren and ten great-grand-children. ‘ ..