DEATH OF CENTENARIAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 19 June 1926, Page 7

DEATH OF CENTENARIAN

early days recalled

(United Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, Tin's Day. Mrs Ann Watson, who reached her hundredth birthday in March last, died this afternoon at Auckland Infirmary, where she was admitted only r«n 2nd of this month. She was born on March 18, 1826, nl. .Shoreditch, London, and came out, to Australia with her parents, and after a brief stay there tlie family came on to New Zealand, arriving some time prior to January 29, 1840, for on that day '.Mrs Watson saw {Jovernor Hobson land at Bay of Islands. Mrs "Watson's mother and stepfather, named Johnston, first landed at Whangaroa and then, moved down to the Bay of Islands. Those were the days of rollicking whale ship scenes at Korornreka, being sometimes terrible orgies. To show bow few Europeans there were at the Bay at those times Mrs Watson could recall the fact that her mother, when she arrived, made the sixth white woman resident in the little, township that formed the first capital of New Zealand.