NOTABLE LINK WITH THE PAST

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 82, 31 December 1929, Page 8

NOTABLE LINK WITH THE PAST

DEATH OF MISS AGNES BURNS Dominion Special Service. Dunedin, December 30. A notable link with the past history of Otago was severed to-day by the death of Miss Agnes Burns, the last surviving member of one of the bestknown pioneer families of the province. She was a daughter of the Rev. Thomas Burns, D.D., the first minister of the Presbyterian Church of Otago, who arrived here in the Philip Laing in 1848, and who, after a long and well-remem-bered ministry, died in 1871. Six daughters and one son came to New Zealand with Dr. Burns and Mrs. Burns, and the death of Miss Agnes Burns removes the last survivor of that notable family. Aged just over one year when she reached here, Miss Agnes Burns shared with her father and mother and sisters and brother the hardships of the early days, and learned to show the high courage, true unselfishness, and great thoughtfulness that characterised the pioneers of the settlement. She had always lived in Dunedin, and was the only unmarried member of the family. When the Philip Laing reached Dunedin on April 15, 1848, the passengers were landed on the beach and were installed temporarily in shelters, or barracks, built of native grass, rushes, flax and small timber, erected on the foreshore from High Street to Dowling Streetsuch were the beginnings of the Otago Settlement from which Dunedin grew in twenty years to the proud position of the leading commercial town of the colony. Miss Burns ¥aw the varying changes in the transformation from a wilderness to a thriving town, and like the children of all the early settlers, laboured with the rest. She was ever faithful to • the church which her father had established here, and till recent years was a consistent worshipper at First Church.