OBITUARY

Grey River Argus, 17 March 1932, Page 8

OBITUARY

MRS MARY PUGH, MAIMAI. The death of one of the early pioneers of the Grey Valley, Mrs , Mary Pugh, in her ninetieth year, occurred on Tuesday afternoon at the residence of her son-in-law, Mr A. Hannah, of Maimai.’ A native of Georgetown, Tasmania, . where she was born on January 4, 1843, the late Mrs Pugh was one of a family of eighteen, and she saw the growth of colonial life in a manner which it was given few to observe. She often related how her father*in the forties and ’fifties of last century was the driver of a large bullock team in the island State, and reared his large family on a wage that would have been considered even in these hard times quite insufficient for a family only one-sixth the size of hers, although in those days the rule was for the pioneers to provide nearly <lll of their own food and clothing. At the age of twenty, Mrs Pugh in the year 1863 landed in Otago, at the out-

break of the gold rushes, and was married in that province, where she resided for seven years, after which she came in the year 1870 to the West Coast. She took up her residence at Granville, once a thriving mining township near Totara Flat, with her husband, by whom she was predeceased twenty-eight, years ago, and throughout her long period of residence in that locality she enjoyed the esteem and regard of everybody. She reared a family of seven, of whom two survive, a daughter and a son, the latter being Mr Allan Pugh, senr., of Greymouth. She is also survived by no fewer than ninety-three other descendants, including nineteen grandchildren, seventy-two great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. The deceased lady was a sterling specimen of the pioneer type, and her passing removes a notable link with the earliest days of colonial settlement. The funeral will take place at Reefton tomorrow, leaving Maimai at 11 a.m. for St. Stephen’s Church (Reefton), and thence at 1 p.m. for the Suburban Cemetery.