Emma Fergusson

Actually Hudson and Emma had 11 children. Hudson their eldest son died at the age of 4 he was born 1885 died 1889. My father was the youngest child born 1904.

Emma Fergusson was my great-grandmother. She was born on the 18 January 1863 probably in the Kaipara District. She was the third child of Lavinia Martin (nee Hollingsworth) and Ambrose or Richard Martin a seaman. She was 17 years old when she married Hudson Pomare Fergusson, a bushman, at Rawene in the Hokianga. Hudson and Emma bought a small farm near Kaeo in Northland. She had her first child when she was 18 years old and altogether had 10 children. Their eldest son, Hudson, died at the age of five years in a school yard accident but all the rest lived to
adulthood. Often Emma and the children were left to run the farm as Hudson was off in the bush.
He was said to be a strong but gentle man. Emma and the children had to tend to the herd of cows
which numbered about 10. They had to be hand milked and the milk turned in to butter via hand
turned churn. Their house was small in the beginning but was continually enlarged using pit sawn
timber. Emma with the help of her eldest daughter split all the wooden shingles for the roof by themselves. Inside the kitchen was a long wooden table which was surrounded by a long wooden stoll on which the children sat. On the table, Emma placed wild pigeon stew which was a common
family meal. Emma was reputed to be a crack shot and it is said that she often bagged a dozen
native pigeons on one journey into the nearby forest. They were cooked in a large cast iron pot
which was always boiling away on the top a black coal range. Their farm was at Oratere which is three to four kilometres out of Kaeo on the main road north. The family named it Stonehenge because of the the large rock protruding out of the ground. The house they occupied was destroyed by fire after Emma's death. Emma Fergusson predeceasedher husband, when she died of creeping paralysis on the 31st July 1917. She was 54 years old. She was buried in a small graveyard now overgrown near the Kaeo Hotel.