OBITUARY

Otago Witness, Issue 3576, 26 September 1922, Page 26

OBITUARY

A PIONEER COLONIST. A MUCH-TRAVELLED WRITER. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 4. There are many people in New Zealand who will remember Mr Frederick Louls Mieville, one of New Zealand's early colon ists—indeed, he was ojic of tlic “ Canter* bury pilgrims,” who arrived in the barque Dominion at Port Lyttelton in 1851. The news of liis death will be received with regret, although he lied attained the gTeat age of 92 years. Mr Mieville died at The Goilands, Maidstone, on July 29. From 1851 to 1868 lie lived in New Zealand, being first a cadet on Mr SuLsted’e run at Good wood. Then he took up the run which h* named Glenham, in Southland, adjoining the sheep station of his father-in-law, Dr F. H. Richardson, whose son afterwards became member for Mataura. His eldest son, Mr A. F. Mieville, who has been living in London for some years, was born at Glenham, in 1855. On returning to England n IS6B, Mr Mieville became a member of the London Stock Exchange, an institution with which his family had long been connected. The New Zealand friends of Mr James Morrison will learn with regret of his death on July 31 while on a visit to England. Mr Morrison passed away at the residence of his daughter, Mrs 'Windsor. Foster Lane. Ths funeral took piece at Ilford yesterdiav. A lady very well known in New Zealand in years gone by, Mrs Annie Augusta Edwards, passed away Nat 7 Sloane Street, on July 31. She was the widow of the Hoxl. Nathaniel Edwards, M.L.C., of Nelson. The death is announced of a well-known writer in the person of Mrs Jane Allen Visger (“J. A. Owen”), who passed away at Grange Park, Ealing, on July 30, at the age of 80. The daughter of Mi* Thomas Pindler, of Burslem, Mrs Visger went to New Zealand in 1863, the year of her marriage to Mr George Newton Owen, and for five years she lived near Auckland. After Mr Owen s death sllc came back to England in 1878 . from Honolulu. In 1883 she married Mr Harman Visger, of Bristol, and from 1910 to 1913 she lived in Australia and Honolulu, returning finally to settle in England. Mrs Visger was a great traveller and her life was not without exciting incidents. For instance, Slic was shipwrecked in 1882 in the mail steamer Duro, off Cape Finisterre. Ono of her best known books is “Tho l?fory of Hawaii.’ The Times, in an appreciatory obituary notice, says that she ‘‘will doubtless be best remembered for her articles and books about Nature, and especially for those pub lushed under the signature cf ‘A Son of the Marshes,’ in which her collaborator was a working naturalist in Surrey.” It is remarked that Mia Visger’ wrote with a real knowledge and love of Nature, and her work must have inspired thousands of people with a low enthusiasm for the observation and study of tile country. She will be more sincerely regretted than some writers ol greater literary fame.