Initial originally mistranscribed as 'I'.
Biography contributed by Bernadette Siebert
Jessie Sarah Currie was born in Kyneton, Victoria, Australia in 1878, the youngest child of Scot, Alexander and Elizabeth nee Green. When Jessie was a baby her father Alexander died in 1879, aged 39y. Widowed Elizabeth and her children aged from 13 to 2, immigrated from Melbourne to Auckland aboard the ship Hero later that same year. They moved to a house in Pollen Street, Ponsonby.
In October 1903, at her sister’s house, Pollen Street, Jessie married George Lawrence Evans, a 28-year-old timber merchant from Gisborne. The wedding was described in the newspaper. “The bride, who was given away by her uncle, Mr Alfred Reynolds, was attired in a beautiful costume of cream cloth, with medallion insertion. She wore the customary wreath and veil, and carried a handsome bouquet.” Her sister Mabel was her attendant.
George was born in Oamaru in 1875, the third son of John Thomas Evans formerly of Gloucestershire, England and Emma nee Shacklock. He had left his employment in Gisborne in 1900 when he was appointed to a position on the staff of the Auckland City Council. By 1903 he was the Evans, of ‘Messrs Evans, Nield & Co’ who had taken over a business of Timber, Coal, and Firewood Merchants and Insurance Agents in Gisborne.
There, three children were born:
- Eileen Mabel (1906-1998)
- Lawrence Shacklock (1910-1931)
- Ellis George Shacklock (1919-2008)
Then, George filled the office of accountant-secretary to the firm of Grundy and Shennan, Ltd. And in 1919 George was appointed to the position of secretary to the Cook Hospital Board. Jessie exhibited at the Gisborne Rose Show in the 1920s, regularly winning prizes for her rose, pansies and daffodils. Their elder son Lawrence was killed in 1931 when he accidentally shot himself at his workplace at the Borough Council, where he was a clerk. He was two weeks off being 21 years.
Their younger son, Ellis received an MA and was, for a while, a master at the Auckland Grammar School. In 1948 he went to England and did research at Birmingham University. And in 1950 he was appointed to a post as educational psychologist with the London University Institute of Psychiatry. He married in England and died there.
George Lawrence died in Gisborne in July 1954 aged 79 and was buried at the Taruheru Cemetery, Gisborne. His probate left all real and personal estate worth 400 pounds to Jessie for her absolute use, then to daughter Eileen and her heirs. George instructed that his interment was private with no flowers.
After George’s death, Jessie moved to Taranaki to live with her married daughter. She died seven months after George, in February 1955, aged 77 years. She was buried in the Te Henui Cemetery, New Plymouth. Her probate worth 2000 pounds, was to be split equally between her two surviving children, with the furniture and chattels to go to her daughter Eileen.
Jessie is the sister-in-law of #382 Emily CURRIE Ponsonby & daughter of #382 Elizabeth Currie Edinburgh Street
Sources
- Archway probate Jessie Sarah George
- Findagrave
- PAPERS PAST Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17598, 14 October 1931, Page 5
- PAPERS PAST Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9887, 31 October 1903, Page 2
- PAPERS PAST Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8927, 20 August 1900, Page 2
- PAPERS PAST Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14886, 14 April 1919, Page 6
- PAPERS PAST Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23364, 21 September 1950, Page 8
- Intentions to Marry Gisborne 1903