Sunday, October 4, 2009

Update on the MOTAT headstones




Further to previous post. Another visit to MOTAT today -- I took the opportunity of taking better shots of the headstones lineup.



Evelyn Florence Gunthorpe, who died in 1913. I haven't been able to track down anything further on her yet.

 

Clara Bethell, whose headstone sparked all this off. She died during the 1918 influenza epidemic, poor soul.

 

A beautiful set of ornamentations.

 

The two Frazer boys, Raymond and Willie, appear to have been interred at Purewa Cemetery over at Meadowbank, as James Raymond Frazer and  William Harold Frazer. Dates of death and ages match those on the Purewa database.

 

Another mystery, Phoebe Haslam. Haslam is an Avondale name -- the hunt is still on.

 

 The answer from MOTAT so far is that it is believed these stones came from "Newton Cemetery" (that is, Symonds Street Cemetery, when the Grafton Gully motorway project in the 1960s cleared out the Catholic and most of the Anglican sections. So far, this is the only headstone at MOTAT that is confirmed as having come from the Anglican section at Symonds Street Cemetery. It's the oldest here by definite date, 1877.

 

Catherine De Silva is buried at Waikaraka Cemetery in Onehunga.

How they got there, by the church at MOTAT, is still unanswered. For the moment.

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