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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21068, 30 December 1931, Page 12

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NEW ZEALAND'S EARLY DAYS. MRS. HAROLD FREEMAN'S DEATH. [FROM OUE OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON. Nov. 24. The death occurred on November 19 at her home in Malvern of Mrs. Alice Mary Freeman (nee Alice Mary Wakefield), widow of Mr. Harold Freeman and niece of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. By her death, in the B.3rd year of her age, an interesting link with the early days of New Zealand and the founder of the colony, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, is broken. The daughter of Mr. Daniel Bell Wakefield, acting-Judge of tho Supremo Court of New Zealand, and Angela, daughter of Thomas Attwood, M.P., of Birmingham, Mrs. Freeman was born in Wellington in October, 1849, and for the. first 13 years of her life lived in close contact with her uncle, Edward .Gibbon, tor whom she always had a deep admiration and profound respect as being tho chief instrument in 1840 in securing New Zealand for the British Crown. Much of the information of tho early days of the colony and of Edward Gibbon s life related in tho biographies by Dr. Richard Garnett, Miss Irma O'Connor and Dr. A. .1. Ilarrop were drawn from her collection of records and her memory, which was keen and accurate right to tlie end of her days. After her uncle's death in 1862, her father having died in 1858. Miss Wakefield returned to England with her mother in 1863 in the sailing ship Asterope, making a five months' voyage round the. Horn. In 1874 her mother died and a few months later she married her second cousin, Harold, eldest son of Edward Augustus Freeman, of Somerlease, Somerset, regius professor of modern history in tho University of Oxford. For the greater part of her married life Mrs. Freeman lived at, Malvern Wells, wintering as a rule on account, of her health at Davos, Switzerland. She never ceased to take the keenest, interest in the country of her birth, with which her father and" uncles had licen so intimately connected. As late as 1929 she entertained at her home in Malvern Major Sandford and a number of New Zealand H Scouts who had come to England to take part in the World Jamboree. Mrs. Freeman's only son. Major Edward Freeman, was killed in France in March, 1916, as second in command of the 10th Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Hot- husband died a few months later. However, her son left three boys and the eldest of these, Captain Harold Freeman, M.C., of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, afforded his grandmother in tho last few weeks of her life the greatest pleasure by bis excellent work as officer commanding the troops in Cyprus, during the riots there in October. Her second grandson is also a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and her youngest a lieutenant-commander, R.N. Her last years were further gladdened by the arrival of three great-grandsons. Her elder daughter is unmarried, but her younger daughter married in 1908 Colonel (then Major) Swynfen Jervis, of the South Staffordshire Regiment, J.P., of Abbey Willows, Barton, Oxford. Mrs. Freeman's grandfather, Thomas Attwood, was tho founder of political unions and one of the prime movers of the Reform Bill of 1852. The late election, just, 100 years after this, afforded his grand daughter the greatest satisfaction in showing that, the trust her grandfather placed in the democracy of England was not misplaced.