Biographical information provided for the He Tohu exhibition:
Jane Kerse Dynes was born in 1855 in Edrom on the Scottish Borders, the daughter of James Kerse and Jane Renton. When she was eleven her family emigrated to Queensland on the Maryborough. The climate did not suit these Scots so in 1870 they sailed to Dunedin on the Gothenburg where they lived for a few years before drawing a farm block at Dunrobin, near Heriot in Otago.
In 1885 Jane married an Irish born farmer Robert (Robbie) Dynes from Benio, near Pukerau in Southland. Jane was one of nine children and she too had nine children born between 1889 and 1901. Baby Gladys died at the age of six weeks. Four of Jane’s sons fought in and survived the First World War.
Despite her large family Jane had enough energy to come 2nd in the Married Ladies’ Race for those with not less than five in a family at the Benio Picnic in 1908, the Mataura Ensign reports.
Jane became a widow in 1939. She lived until the age of 93, dying in Wyndham where her daughter Isabell lived, in 1948.