LINK WITH EARLY DAYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22353, 26 February 1936, Page 5

LINK WITH EARLY DAYS

MRS. J. HOWARD JACKSON DEATH IN DUNEDIN An interesting link with the early days of colonisation in New Zealand was severed recently by the death of Mrs, J. Howard Jackson at her home in Royal Terrace, Dunedin, at the age of 84 years. Mrs. Jackson's father, Mr. Gilbert Mair arrived in the Dominion in 1824, and settled at the Bay of Islands at a time when the Maoris were suspicious of the white men and -their works, and were easily provoked to violence. He and his family were driven out of Whangarei by hostile natives, and narrowly escaped the sack of Kororareka by Hone Heke in 1545. Mrs. Jackson's mother was born in Cornwall and came to New Zealand iu 1819, her father being engaged by the Rev. Samuel Marsden to teach the Maoris useful arts. She learned to speak the Maori language iluently in a short time. It was after she had returned to Australia that she met Gilbert Mair, to whom she was married by the Rev. Samuel Marsden in 1827, and went to live at the Bay of Islands. Mrs. Gilbert Mair died in 1870. Mrs. Jackson was one of a family of 12, the lives of whom she has commemorated in her "Annals of a New Zealand Family," published in 1935. The names of some of her brothers will for ever shine, like that of her father, in the records of the early days. Perhaps the best known of her brothers was Captain Gilbert Mair, who won the rare and coveted military decoration, the New Zealand Cross. Major William Gilbert Mair was another member of the family who had a distinguished record. Mrs. Jackson was born at Whangarei in May, 1852, and it was when she was 81 years of age that she was inspired to write her reminiscences after reading a lecture by Dr. Elder on the life of Samuel Marsden. Her stories of the early days are well worth the study of the younger generation, as they are typical of the hardships of the times. She was married in 1877 at Marton to Mr. J. Howard Jackson, who was a surveyor and civil engineer, and who, after living in the North Island for some years, went to Lawrence as the general manager of the Blue Spur gold mine. Mrs. Jackson followed later with her five children. After a short, illness her husband died in October, 1916. Both of Mrs. Jackson's sons predeceased her, the younger, Howard Maurice, being killed in action on Gallipoli on August 27, 1915, and the elder, Alan Mair, who also served in the war, dying in Canada in 1929, largely as the result of shell shock and illness contracted at the war. Mrs. Jackson is survived by three (laughters, Mrs. A. .T. Chrystal, Miss Ethel Jackson and Miss Dorothy JackI son.