OBITUARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16439, 16 January 1917, Page 9

OBITUARY.

MRS. CHARLOTTE SPEIGHT.

EARLY DAYS RECALLED.

One of the oldest residents in the Auckland district died yesterday in the -person of Mrs. Charlotte Speight, widow of the late Sergeant-Major William Isaac Speight, of the 58th Regiment. Mrs. Speight, who reached the age of 87 years, had been resident in Auckland for 72 years. As a girl of 15, she arrived in th« Waitomata Harbour in the ship Minerva, about 1845. Her maiTiage to Sergeant-Major Speight— regiment was in New Zealand as part of the British force engaged. in the Heko war of the Par North—vras one of the first celebrated in the ©rigital St. Paul's Church on Britomart Point,. When the 68th left New Zealand Sergeant.. Major Speight accepted his discharge from the service, and remained" a resident of Auckland until his death about fifteen, years ago. He became an officer of 'the New Zealand Treasury, but laft that «ervice when the seat of Government was removed from Auckland to Wellington. In the course of the Waikato and Taranaki wars he again saw military service in connection with the commissariat branch. Sergeant-Major and Mrs. Speight had a family 11 in number, of whom six survive— Mrs. E M. Warner, of Parnell, Miss Speight, Mrs. Joseph Hardwick, Pakuranga, Mrs. F. Twiname, Parnell, Mr. Charles Speight, Hamilton, and Mr. N. Speight, Cambridge. Of her large succession of grandsons, no less than six are now serving their country at the front.-