Maker: Sandra Schmidt

Panel number: 409

Petition sheet number: 499

Person honouring: Frances J Cox

Relationship to maker: Unknown

Obituary (from Manawatu Evening Standard 14 December 1940
The death occurred on Wednesday at her residence, in Gladstone Road, Woodville of Mrs Frances Jane Cox.

Mrs Cox was the oldest surviving link with the early pioneers who began the conversion of forest lands into the advanced farming district which surrounds Woodville today. On January 24 this year Mrs Cox’s 95th birthday was celebrated by a reunion of family and friends and the event received wide recognition.

With keen faculties, and enjoying such pastimes as knitting, writing and gardening, and possessing a great store of interesting reminiscences, the late Mrs Cox had a most pleasing personality. She could clearly remember, for instance, the publication of Crimean War news when a child and, when at school, assisting in the making of garments for soldiers.

Mrs Cox was a native of Great Barrington, Oxfordshire, and, after marriage resided in Birmingham. With her husband [Henry, 30] and their three children she landed at Napier in March 1874, from the first free emigrant ship the Invererne, after a voyage lasting 16 weeks.

The family has some experience of tent life at Te Aute at the time when railway construction was proceeding south from Napier. Their next move was to Waipawa, and from there (in 1878) they accompanied other pioneers who were taking up land in the Woodville Small Farms Association block, where they commenced to carve out a home adjacent to Woodlands Road. That part of the journey to Woodville was made in a bullock dray is illustrative of the primitive state of the country, at the time, and throws into bold relief the adaptability and character of settlers who had separated from amenities and environments so sharply contrasting.

It is interesting to note further that the late Mr H Cox was the first Chief Ranger of the Hope of Woodville Tent, Rachabite Lodge, an institution which still flourishes. She is survived by seven members of a family of ten.