WAIPU PIONEER DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 239, 9 October 1928, Page 8

WAIPU PIONEER DEAD.

MRS. ANNIE BUTAI. WRECK OF THISTLE RECALLED. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent) WHAXGAREI, this day. With the death of Mrs. Annie Bryan another pap is mode in the thin ranka of the surviving pioneers of Waipu. Mrs. Bryan was born in 1542 at "Big Glen," Upper Baddook, Xova Scotia, and on December 17, 1859, when seventeen years of age. she sailed for Auckland is the barque Ellen Lewis from St. Ann's, Cape Breton, with her parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. Donald McLeod, and the other five ol their children. Auckland was reached on May 14, 1860, and after a short stay there the family went to Waipu, taking up a property in the north river district. At the age of 22 yean she married the late Mr. Oscar Butler Bryan, who predeceased her 22 years ago. Soon after her marriage she and her husband took up a. farm at Mill Brook, where they remained until about 1885, when they removed to the Whangaiei district. After about 17 years' residence there they moved to Auckland, and there Mrs. Bryan remained for 18 or 19 years after her husband's death. She then returned to Waipu and spent her last days among her own kith and kin. She leaves no children. With the death of Mrs. Bryan !l recalled the wreck of the Thistle, a schooner of about 25 tons, on Bream Head, on March 31, 1888. This pchooner, while making for the Waipu River from Auckland with 22 souls aboard, struck bad weather and made for the shelter of Whangarei Harbour, but in the darkness crashed on ts the rocks at the heads, where Miss Mitchelaon (a sister of Sir E. Mitchelson) and Mr. Alex. McLeod, of Waipu, lost their lives. With her death there remains only one survivor of the wreck, Mr. Duncan H. McKenzie, of Kensington Farm, Waipu.