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Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 9 July 1917, Page 8

A Wellington message records the death of Mr Alex McKay, at one time geologist to the Mines Department. Att Brooklyn, Wellington, on Friday, a social was given by the Anglican parishioners to Rev. Mr Hobday and Mrs Hobday, who are shortly taking up their residence at Elthani. Among those present were the Rev. B. Hudson (Presbyterian) and the Rev. J. H. White*(Methodist). Both of the reverend gentlemen made speeches, in which they expressed their regret at losing Mr" Hobday. During his residence at Brooklyn, they said, Mr Hobday had shown a brbad-minded spirit in all his dealings with them, and they were sorry to leave him go. Mr Westwopd, on behalf of the parishioners and friends, presented Mr Hobday with a Avoil-nlk'd purse of sovereigns, and in the coarse of a neat little speech referred x<j the loss, which the Anglican community at Brooklyn would suffer through. Mr Hobday's transference. The death of Mrs Caroline Elizabeth Uedlington, a native of the Bay of Islands, who was stated to be the oldest living New Zealand-born European at" the time of her death, took place at, Whnngarei on June 23. She was born jit Pnihia Bay of Islands, on October 10, 1828, and thus was in her 89th y<>iu\. She was the eldest" of the 12 children of the late Mr Gilbert Mair, one? of the earlier settlers in the Bay ■of Islands, who subsequently settled permanently at Whangarei in 1842. As n i'.irl of 11 years of age she witnessed ■fcho arrival of Captain Hobson, New y.'.-;\]n nd's first Governor, and with her iiprcn.ts she saw the signing of the T:i>aiy of Waitan.gi in 1840. Mrs Bed'lmeton's husband, to whom she was ■married in 1861, died in 1891. They "had three sons—Percy, Claude and Sr.smley —of whom the hist named only Is alive. There also was one daughter, Mrs Arthur Hooper.