A CENTENARIAN PASSES.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 June 1926, Page 3

A CENTENARIAN PASSES.

LINK WITH EARLY DAYS. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, June 19. - Mrs. Ann Watson, who readied 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 lams at the Bay of Islands. Mrs. Watson's mother and stepfather, nanied Johnston, first landed at Whangaroa and then moved down to the Bay of Islands, in those days of rollicking whale ships when the scenes at Kororareka were sometimes terrible orgies. To show how few Europeans there were at the Bay of Islands in those days, 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.