CANTERBURY PIONEER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 23

CANTERBURY PIONEER

DEATH AT CHRISTCHUfICH NINETY-FIVE YEARS OLD The death- occurred this week of the oldest native-born white inhabitant of; Canterbury—Mrs. Elizabeth Breitmeyer, who was born at Akaroa in 1842. and who remembered when Akaroa. was little more than a strip of bench with bush down to the water's edge. Mrs. JBreitmoyer's father, Mr. Peter Brown, landed in Wellington in 18-10 from Glasgow by the Bengal Merchant. At first he intended to settle at l'etone, but the Maoris were too troublesome, and ho hired a schooner and came to Akaroa, where the French immigrants hud just arrived in the Compte do Paris Mr. Brown went to Pigeon Bay for some years, and together with Mr. Ebenezer Hay built a school there, Mrs. Breitiyeyer was the first child baptised in Akaroa. The cefemony was performed by Bishop Selwyn during his visit in 1844. In 1861 sho was married by the Rev. William Aylmer, in St. Peter's Church, Akaroa, to Mr. George Breitmeyer, a Gorman immigrant on the Compte de Paris, which arrived in 1840. They went to live at German Bay, which is now called Takamatua, and had a fine dairy there. Thev lived in the house previously occupied by Commodore Levaux, the captain of the Compte de Paris. Mrs. Breitmeyer and her husband moved to Pigeon Bay and then to Christchurch.