DEATH OF CENTENARIAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20228, 12 April 1929, Page 13

DEATH OF CENTENARIAN

MRS. FRANCES WEBB.

BORN (04 YEARS AGO.

NOTED RESIDENT OF FEILDING

[by telegraph.—own correspondent.] FEILDING. Thursday.

Regarded as the oldest European woman in New Zealand, Mrs. Frances Webb died to-day at the age of 104 years. She celebrated the 104 th anniversary of her birthday at Feilding on March 2. Mrs. Webb was born at Silvcrwell, a few miles from Truro, in the county of Cornwall, in 1825, in the reign of King George 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, whoso maiden name was •Frances Harris,. lived in Cornwall until her marriage in 1851 to Mr. William Webb, of Dariev Chapel, 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 came to Australia. Until her death Mrs. Webb wore a brooch made of some of the gold secured there by her husband in those early days.

After some years at Benoligo, Mr* Webb and her husband went to the diggings in Ota go and lived subsequently at Dunedin, Ilokitika and New Plymouth. Since then she lived with one of her two daughters, Mrs. G. H. Foote. For one of such great age, Mrs. Webb retained possession of her faculties to ?». marked degree and she received many congratulatory messages from a widecircle of friends throughout the Dominion on her birthday last month.