MARRIED FOR 65 YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 83, 4 October 1929, Page 13

MARRIED FOR 65 YEARS

A FAMILY KEUNIO2\ T

Mr. and Mrs. J. Johnston, o£; 4, Orangi-Kaupapa road, Wellington, will celebrate on Gth October the sixty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, Mr. Johnston being in his 93rd year, and Mrs. Johnston in her 87th. Mr. Johnston is one of tho seven or eight surviving colonists who arrived in Otago by the first four ships' in 1848, being a passenger by the Blundel. He was then a boy of nine, and has still recollections of the beauty of the virgin bush at Portobello, with the exquisite white clematis on tho trees, so wonderful as "to impress even so young an observer. The tameness of the birds, all unaccustomed to, mankind, was another surprise, and was in contrast to the wild, dense, and silent bush. His father was the second settler in Portobello. Mrs. Johnston arrived in this country by tho Strathallan in 1858. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston havo a family of eleven, seven sons and four daughters. Thero aro ten grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The fine old colonists enjoy remarkably good health, and New Zealand may be proud of such. Few early settlors can show a record of S2 years' experience, such as that of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, aud thoy aro to be congratulated on their remarkable attainment, in the. land of their adoption, of such a splendid old age. ■ ■. ■

[A photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston appears on page 7.]