CENTENARIAN’S DEATH

Southland Times, Issue 19900, 19 June 1926, Page 6

CENTENARIAN’S DEATH

MRS ANN WATSON. OLD DAYS RECALLED. (Per United Press Association.) Auckland, June 18. Mrs Ann Watson, who reached her hundredth birthday in March last, died this afternoon at the Auckland Infirmary where she was admitted only on the 2nd of this month. Born on March 18, 1826, at Shoreditch, London, Mrs Watson came out to Australia with her parents. After a brief stay there the family came on to New Zealand arriving some time prior to January 29, 1840 for on that day Mrs Watson saw Governor Hobson land at the Bay of Islands. Mrs Watson’s mother and stepfather named Johnston, first landed at Whangaroa and then moved down to the Bay of Islands. Those were the days of the rollicking whale ships, the scenes at Kororareka being sometimes terrible orgies. To show how few Europeans there were at the Bay in those times Mrs Watson could recall the fact that her mother when .she arrived made the sixth white woman resident in the little township that formed the first capital of New Zealand.