Biography contributed by Bernadette Siebert
Georgina Sarah Sinclair Jones was born in New Zealand in 1868, probably the illegitimate daughter of Hannah Jones, who came to Thames with her family on board the Armstrong in 1865.
In 1884, when she was 16, Hannah married a Swiss man Paul Louis Meyrat. Paul was a 29-year-old watchmaker, previously living in South Australia where he had married in 1880. Paul and Hannah had a daughter Violet Hannah in 1884, who died aged four months. Paul seems to have then left New Zealand and later died in South Australia in 1894. Georgina reverted to her stepfather’s name and is recorded as Pilcher on electoral rolls. She lived with her mother Hannah and stepfather Henry John Pilcher in Rocky Nook, Auckland, until their deaths, where she consistently stated she was a spinster.
In 1929 newspaper advertisements were placed to find Georgina Meyrat (of parts unknown) for outstanding rates in Opaheke. They failed to find her as she hadn’t used that surname for decades.
Later, in 1932, Georgina married again, when she was 64, to widower Edwin Manfield Baker. Edwin was the son of William and Eliza Baker. William Baker was the owner and subdivider of the Rocky Nook Estate, where Georgina and her parents had lived. Streets in this subdivision were named after his sons – Charles, George, Norman, and Edwin. This marriage was short also, with Edwin dying in 1937.
Georgina died in 1940 aged 71 and is buried in Waikaraka Cemetery. The death notice read, 'loved by all her friends.'
Sources
Papers Past New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20278, 11 June 1929, Page 18
PAPERS PAST Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 172, 22 July 1940, Page 1
Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com)