GOLDEN WEDDINGS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 146, 15 March 1940, Page 13

GOLDEN WEDDINGS

Record Of Five Sisters And Husbands SOUTHLAND PIONEERS Five sisters of a Southland family and their husbands have lived to celebrate their golden weddings. This is shown in the application of Miss B. Clearwater, Mokotua, Southland, for membership of the New Zealand Founders’ Society. Tracing her descent on her mother s side, Miss Clearwater states that John Styles, who arrived at Port, Chalmers in the Ajax in 1.849, and Rachael Bently, who arrived by the Phoebe Dunibar the next year, were married in Dunedin. Coming to Southland in 1877 or 1878, they 'built one of the lii’st settler s houses, if not the first, on the Waimea Plains. They had a family of six sons and five daughters, Miss Clearwater s mother being the second eldest daughter. and it is these live daughters, with their husbands, who have established what the Clearwater family believe to be something of a record in golden wedding celebrations. Mis Clearwater states _ that her grandfather on her father’s side, Garret Mopper Clearwater, arrived in Otago between 1830 and 1840,. and is mentioned in history as working at a southern whaling station in 1840. He married Ann Stevenson, whose mother ca'me out as matron on the ship Philip Laing. There are a large number of descendants of t his couple in Otago and Southland.