NINETY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19384, 20 July 1926, Page 12

NINETY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.

RESIDENT OF NEWMARKET.

Nowadays it falls to the lot of few people to pas 3 their ninetieth birthday, but yesterday there was a steady stream of callers at a house in Maungawhau Road, Newmarket, to pay their compliments to Mrs. M A. Fellows, who has been a resident of the district for over 40 years, and who was celebrating her 91st birthday. Mrs. Fellows arrived in Auckland on the ship Wanganui in 1880, accompanied by her five daughters. She is not, therefore, what may be termed an old colonist, but she has vivid memories of Auckland when it was appreciably smaller than it is to-day. She still retains mental pictures, astonndingly vivid, of the old coaching days in Staffordshire, in which county sue was born. She can recall the creaking old coaches with their plunging horses, and the drivers making the early morning air ring with the music of the coach-horns. Mrs. Fellows has had one trip back to England since she first came to New Zealand, and was able to travel between two counties in a short time by train, whereas in the old days it was an exceedingly hazardous coach journey. Mrs. Fellows has been faced with many difficulties since her arrival in New" Zealand. Her husband died about two years afterwards, and for some time she was a well-known nurse in Auckland. Now she lives happily with her daughters, enjoying a peaceful old age. She has eight grandchildren and one greatgrandchild.