WEDDINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1940, Page 8

WEDDINGS

A UNIQUE RECORD. Five sisters of a Southland family and their husbands have lived to celebrate their golden weddings. This is shown in the application of Miss B. Clearwater, ol' Mokotua, for membership of the New Zealand Founders’ Society. Tracing her descent on her mother's side, Miss Clearwater states that John Styles, who arrived at Port Chalmers in the Ajax in 1849, and Rachael Bently, who arrived by the Phoebe Dunbar the next year? were married in Dunedin. Going to Southland in 1877 or 1878. they built one of the first settler’s houses, if not the first, on the Waimea Plains. They had a family of six sons and five daughters, Miss Clearwater’s mother being the second eldest daughter, and it is these five daughters, with their husbands, who have established what the Clearwater family believe to be something of a record in golden wedding celebrations. Miss Clearwater states that her grandfather on herj father’s side, Garret Mopper Clearwater, arrived in Otago between 1830 and 1840, and is mentioned in history as working at a southern whaling station in 1840. He married Ann Stevenson, whose mother came out as matron on the ship Philip Laing. There are a large number of descendants of this couple in Otago and Southland.