AN OTAGO PIONEER IN WELLINGTON

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 151, 23 March 1938, Page 10

AN OTAGO PIONEER IN WELLINGTON

Arrived By Ship Philip Laing In 1848 TO-DAY 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF SETTLEMENT To-day is the ninetieth anniversay of the settlement of Otago. A little, old lady, bowed with the burden of her years, living with her daughter in a quiet by-street of Wellington, is oue of the last three people living who were present when Dunedin history began. She is Mrs. Mary Stewart, aged nearly 91. She was less than a year old when, in the autumn or 1848, she was carried ashore from the sailing ship Philip Laing, second arrival of Otago’s two pioneer ships. “I don’t remember very much; I was only a wee child then,” she told The Dominion,” when asked if she could recall anything of that romantic and important yesterday. “It happened very long ago—almost in another world! Indeed, it must have been a very different world, the New Zealand of those days, for Mrs. Stewart has grown up with this young Dominion, and into her single lifetime has been crowded practically the whole history of New Zealand development. And yet she told her interviewer, “Mine has been a quiet life.” Long ago, at the time of the disruption of the Church of Scotland and the eSablishment of the Free Kirk, an association was formed in Scotland, by the influence of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the directors of the New Zealand Company, to establish a Free Kirk settlement in the remote Antipodes. Seven years of tedious and discouraging negotiations and delays passed before ever the scheme eventuated.

In the meantime the surveyor Frederick Tuckett selected in the cold south of New Zealand a deserted wasteland where wild hogs rooted and the Maori hunted pigeons in the densely-wooded hills, as a site for the future settlement. Then, iu the stormy winter of 1847, two ships left Home—the John Wickliffe and 'the Philip Laing. On the latter were a tall, austere clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Burns, and among the 247 migrant Scots, the Glasgow cabinetmaker, Duncan Sinclair and wife and their newly-born baby daughter Mary. Of the 93 children who sailed on board that ship, to-day some 90 are dead. Only by what her parents told her afterward has Mrs. Mary Stewart any knowledge of -that stormy passage, when the Philip Laing was driven to shelter under the Isles of Arran, and the Irish coast, and spent a month in the Channel before she won to sea. The Rev. Thomas Burns ruled the immigrants with the rigid religious discipline that characterised the Kirk of that day. No dancing or merrymaking whiled away the long days in the doldrums, nor was any voice raised in song except to the tune of psalm or hymn. Services were held twice daily, for all hands. Nor does she recall the joyful day of arrival, »n April 15, 1848, after 140 days at sea. The Joan Wickliffe was already at anchor, her sails furled, for she had made Port Chalmers on March 23, exactly 90 years ago -to-day. It is said that a small child was dropped into the sea, and' saved from drowning only by the gallantry of the schoolmaster, Blackie, who dived full clad to- the rescue. But that child was not Mary Sinclair, for even at her young age, such an incident could not but have left its impression on her mind.

Her first clear recollection is of playing with her childhood friends in the thick bush which then rolled over the hills above the infant town. Her parents had built for themselves the crude wattle and daub cottage which was the usual European dwelling of that time and place. Where it stood is to-day the heart of Dunedin city, with a great many-storied building on its site.

Later her parents shifted to Port Chalmers, where Mr. Sinclair was practising his trade. There Mary Sinclair grew to womanhood, in that settlement) unshaken by war or earthquake, or other of those violent acts of God or man which checked the progress of other New Zealand pioneer towns. In 1874 she married another Scottish immigrant, John Stewart, of Fifeshire, who landed at Dunedin in 1809. They afterward removed to Auckland, where in 1915 Mr. Stewart died. , Three years ago Mrs. Stewart came to Wellington, to live with her daughter,- Miss M. Stewart, at Hawkestone Street. Her two sons, George and Frank Stewart, are long since grown men, living in Sydney. It was a great thrill for Mrs. Stewart when last year her eldest son paid her a visit—the first in 26 years. Mrs. Stewart is a vivacious and bright old lady, active and cheerful. Until recently she went walking alone daily, and even now needs no hand to help her go up and down stairs, or about the house. But she is more concerned with the things of to-day—-her grown-up children and her fastgrowing grandchildren—than with memories of her childhood as a pioneer in a young and savage land. “No, no,” she says impatiently, shaking her head, “I don’t remember much about all that.”