GREAT OLD AGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 112, 11 April 1929, Page 7

GREAT OLD AGE.

DEATH AT 104 YEARS. MRS FRANCES WEBB, OF FEILDING. Per Press Association. FEILDING, April 11. The death has occurred of Mrs Frances Webb, aged 104 years old, who is claimed to be the oldest European resident in the Dominion. The late Mrs Webb was born at Silverwell, a few miles from Truro, in the County of Cornwall on February 2, 1825, in the reign of King Georgo IV. She had therefore lived during the reign of five British Sovereigns, and was 12 years old when Queen Victoria ascended the throne. Mrs Webb, whose maiden name was Frances Harris, lived in Cornwall until her marriage In 1851 to Mr William Webb at Linkinhorne, Liskeard, Cornwall. With her husband Mrs Webb sailed from Liverpool just before Christmas, 1857, for Australia in the American sailer Tornado, which took six months to accomplish the voyage. Arriving in Melbourne, they later went to the gold diggings at Bendigo where Mr Webb introduced the first gold quartz-crushing plant that went to Australia. After some years at Bendigo Mrs Webb and her husband went to the diggings in Otago and lived subsequently at Dunedin, Hokitika and New Plymouth, later living at Feilding with one of her two daughters.