North Island Strays

Having fun swapping information with Julie at the moment.
She was all excited as her husband didn't think he had any relations until she found my web pages.

The MEIKLE branch of the HENDERSON tree is one of the North Island strays that few of the Southeners knew much about when I started documenting HENDERSONs  back in the 1970s/1980s.  And so it mostly stayed.
Without purchasing certificates, I'd always been puzzled by the 37 year age gap between Grace and the most likely candidate for her husband in the records.
Grace ROBERTSON in my HENDERSON tree turns out to have been the third wife, with the second having the distinction of having died in 1906 as the result of a motor car accident - yes 1906 - check the photo of Janet MEIKLE's headstone online in the Timaru cemetery records.


Inspired by the contact, a couple of shared certificates and trusty Papers Past, quite a bit of meat has been put on the bones now.  Bruce's grandfather John MEIKLE built the Grosvenor Hotel in Timaru, was a coach driver between Timaru and Christchurch, and appears to have driven the Vice Regal party of Sir James & Lady FERGUSSON in 1873.

Wonder what Grace thought about his ashes being buried with the first wife back in Timaru?
Grace seems to have travelled around the country quite a lot, playing croquet.