OVER 150 DESCENDANTS Gipsy Matriarch’s Death

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 822, 16 November 1929, Page 18

OVER 150 DESCENDANTS Gipsy Matriarch’s Death

F recent years the Forest 93K ot ’ Dean lias lost many of its typical old characHumw/lWil ters » k ut by the death of Sarah Fletcher the unique character. Sarah, who was the head of the Fletcher family, whose record eclipses the remarkable record of William Johns, “the Gipsy King,” is said to have been 100 years old when she died, and no one is able to dispute the fact because there is no record of her birth. The fact, however, that her eldest daughter, Emily, who keeps a lodging house at Pontypool, is SO years of age, goes to support the reputed age of Mrs. Fletcher. She was born in a canvas tent on Hannam Common, Shropshire, and since she was a little girl had made the Forest her home. She disdained the thought of living in a caravan, always preferring to “house” herself and her children in tents.

Mrs. Fletcher was the mother of 24 children, 11 of whom are alive. There are more than SO grandchildren, 40 great-grandchildren, while she had ten great-great-grandchildren. This huge family was “mothered” almost to the last by the wonderful old woman who was regarded as “Queen of the Tribe.”

Ever industrious, her familiar figure, garbed in bonnet and shawl and with an old black clay pipe in her mouth, will be greatly missed throughout the Forest of Dean. She was fond of her half-pint of beer, and when out selling her “wares” she called at her favourite inns to “spill a yarn.” In season she went fruit and hop picking, and she last visited the hop fields three years ago.

She knew she was going to die, and during the last few weeks used to say to the residents, “It is the last call I shall make. The end is drawing near.”