OBITUARY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 167, 19 July 1935, Page 2

OBITUARY

MRS. JAMES RUTHERFORD. FAMOUS SCIENTIST’S MOTHER. OVER. 80 YEARS IN DOMINION. A very old pioneer of the Dominion and one of its most highly respected citizens in the person of Mrs. Janies Rutherford, of Fillis Street, New Plymouth, died on Tuesday night at the ago of 93 years. Mrs. Rutherford had been resident in New Zealand for over 80 years and was widely known and greatly beloved by all who knew her. She was a woman of very wide sympathies and did much for her fellow pioneers in the troublous times and hardship experiences through which all passed in the early days of settlement m the Dominion. She and her husband, who predeceased her a few years ago, brought up a family of 12 children, eight of whom are still living, the most distinguished being Lord Ernest Rutherford, of Nelson (Ga.nibridge, England). The late Mrs. Rutherford was a daughter of the late Charles Edwin Thompson, and was born at Hornchurch, Essex, on October 29, 1842. She lost her father when she was a child of 10 years, and two years later she left the Old Land with her mother and the Snuttleworth family, to whom they wore closely related. They made the trip on the sailing ship Bank of England, and landed at Auckland. During her long residence in the Dominion Mrs. Rutherford went through all the hardships attendant upon pioneering in a new country. She retained to the iast a very clear recollection of many of those experiences. After some years in Auckland Mrs. Thonipson and her daughter and other relatives went to New Plymouth in the brig Ocean, under command of Captain Cain. They remained here till the troubles arose in connection with the Maori War, when, with many other women and children, taking up their residence at Spring Grove.

The marriage to Afr. James Ruther* ford took place on April 28, 186 G. Mr. Rutherford was a native of Sco-tlano, and left to come to New Zealand at the age of four yeans, in the ship Phoebe Dunbar. After the. marriage they lived for some time at Foxhill, but removed to Havelock, in the Afarlborough district, in 1881. The family moved to Taranaki in 1887, and from then up to the time of her death, Mrs. Rutherford has made her home in that district, firstly for some years at Pungarehu and latterly in New Plymouth. Mrs. Rutherford was a great lover of all that is beautiful, and delighted in the sunshine of her home, with its setting among delightful trees and shrubs overlooking Pukekura Park.

The surviving members of her family, to whom Dominion-wide sympathy will be extended, are:—Air. George Rutherford (Auckland), Airs. AL P. Chapman (Frasertown, Hawke’s Bay), Lord Ernest Rutherford of Nelson (Cambridge. England), Airs. 11. G. Htreilf (Shaftesbury, Te Aroho), Mr. James Rutherford (New Plymouth). Mrs. 11. G. Sergei Hamilton), Mrs. L. T. Bell (Kataia), and Mr. Arthur Rutherford (Waihou, Te Aroha). Mrs. A. T. Elliot, a daughter who resided in Southland, died 23 years ago, while Herbert and Charles were drowned when they were children in a boating accident in Polorus Sound, Alarlborough. and Percy died when an infant.