Ann B. Paterson

Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156, including mapping where they lived. Download pdf of this research here.

See 108 Annie Paterson (Ann's daughter)

Ann Black Paterson, nee Brown  [Ann B. Paterson, Roslyn] (No. 35)

Land description: Part section No. 8 of Block 4, District of Upper Kaikorai. Address: 115 Highgate.

Age in 1893: 46

Ann Black Brown, born 18 March 1846, was the daughter of Daniel Brown (born Glasgow, 1822) and Helen Lundie (1830-1895), who married in New Kirkpatrick, Dunbartonshire, in 1845. The Blacks emigrated to New Zealand with their six children on the Strathfieldsaye in 1858 from Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire. Daniel built a house in Roslyn in 1858, prefabricated and shipped from Australia. This house, at 8 Lundie Street, is now the earliest surviving Roslyn dwelling. Daniel became a dairy farmer with a Crown Grant of 30 acres stretching westwards from Highgate to Kaikorai Valley. Annie, his eldest daughter, married John Paterson, a master mariner, in Roslyn in 1870. John was born in Scotland about 1842 and emigrated about 1869. Daniel Brown conveyed a piece of his land to Annie in 1871 and on it she built 115 Highgate.

Between 1871 and 1886, she had four daughters and three sons. In 1902 Annie bought the mansion ‘Bryngwylt,’ built by N. Y. A. Wales, for £2,400. The Patersons spent the rest of their lives at what is now 38 Belgrave Crescent, but still owned 115 Highgate, which they let. Ann, a shrewd businesswoman, also leased land with a house and two shops in the business area of Roslyn. Annie Paterson is unusual, if not unique, in that all three of the Dunedin houses in which she is known to have lived have appeared in Lois Galer’s books on Dunedin’s historic houses. The titles of two of the dwellings are in her name; the third was her childhood home, owned by Daniel Brown.

Captain Paterson died in 1914, aged 72. Their youngest son, Norman Gilmore Paterson, who had enlisted as a gunner in September 1917, boarded the Tahiti in Wellington in July 1918 and died of influenza on 4 September, one of 65 deaths on board before the ship berthed at Plymouth. He was buried at sea. Annie died in 1922, aged 75, and is buried in the Northern Cemetery with her family. By the terms of her will, her Trustees were to manage her assets for up to twenty years; her daughter Florence did not officially inherit 115 Highgate until 1943.

'Influenza hits troopship. 100 years ago; from our archives'. Otago Daily Times, 18 September 2018.