Famous Baron

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 399, 6 July 1928, Page 1

Famous Baron

Daughter-in-Law of de Thierry Lives Here HISTORY’S FORGOTTEN PAGES ”1 suppose you would call me the Baroness Dowager. My stepson’s wife in Dominion Road is the Baroness. I am the Baroness Mary Jane de Thierry. In her 95th year, the daughter-in-law of the famous Baron Charles de Thierry,” Sovereign Chief of New Zealand and King of Nukahava,” as the Frenchman styled himself on arrival in this country, the Baroness Mary Jane constitutes an interesting link with the past. Her husband, Baron Charles Thomas Frederick Hippolytus de Thierry, was the eldest son of the Baron Charles., who was at Cambridge when Hongi and Waikato visited the University. He had been in the Portuguese diplomatic service, and an officer in an English cavalry regiment. The son of French parents, the Baron was educated partly in London. Purchasing a large tract of country in what is known as the north of Auckland, de Thierry in 1823 appealed to the British Crown for recognition of the deed. He was told that New Zealand was not a Crown possession. He met with little success, and, after years of agitation, eventually died in Auckland a bitterly disappointed man.

‘‘tie lies over in the Symonds Street Cemetery,” said his daughter-in-law, the Baroness Mary Jane, who has lived quietly on her own property in the same street for over 30 years. ‘‘There are three barons in all buried there.” Beside the Baron Charles, rests his son and grandson—-all Barons de Thierry. The Baroness, who originally accompanied her husband to New Zealand to press his land claims, is also buried there. There is no tombstone or monument to mark the last resting place of these members of a family so l intimately associated with the early history of the Dominion, The present baron is Baron Frederick James de Thierry, who resides with his wife and family in Dominion Road. He is the stepson of the Baroness Mary Jane. In his possession is a desk originally used by his distinguished grandfather. There are also several branches of the family of Maori extraction residing in the Waikato. One lives at Rangiriri. WRITES WITHOUT GLASSES The Baroness Mary Jane, as mentally alert at 95 as a woman 40 years her junior, does her own housework, reads and writes without glasses, and “thanks God every day” for her good health. Only once in her life was she attended by a doctor. Born in County Armagh, Ireland, in November, 1834, she arrived in Auckland in 1865. Her only child died on the Ganges en route to the colony.

With her husband —she was then a Mrs. Brown —she went to the Waikato, where she lived in raupo whares and generally experienced the vicissitudes of the early days. At one time she was engaged washing clothes for the Imperial soldiers who were still in that district. “ Yes, these hands have worked. I have never been afraid of work. I can still work, and I am only too happy when I am employed. , . _ . It was not until some time later that the Irish girl, then a widow, married the eldest son of Baron Charles de Thierry There was no issue of the the marriage, though there was already a family of five stepchildren to be mothered. Nowadays the Baroness-Dowager lives quietly in her Symonds Street home. Few people in the neighbourhood are even aware of her existence, let alone her association, by marriage, with a family that played an important part in the early history of New Zealand.