Mary Sainsbury

Signed family name

Sainsbury

Signed given name

Mary

Given address

Kaipara Flats

Sheet number

379

Town/Suburb

Kaipara Flats

City/Region

Auckland region

Notes

Biography contributed by Bernadette Siebert

Mary was born 1854 in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England, the daughter of dairy farmer, Johnson Denby and Sarah nee Robinson. In 1877 in Lydney, Gloucestershire, England, Mary married Thomas Cornock Sainsbury Jr. Thomas was a 34-year-old farmer from Lydney. His father was also a farmer, Thomas Cornock Sainsbury Sr and mother, Maria nee Barton. Thomas and Mary had their first child Sarah, born 1878 in Lydney.

The next year, they immigrated to Auckland on the SS British Empire arriving February 1880. The couple settled on a farm in Kaipara Flats, north of Auckland, where they had another five children.

Sarah Louisa Lydney (1878–1982)
Isabel Barton (1880–1911)
Maria Lucy (1881–1949)
Tom Denby (1883–1971)
Helen Laura (1885–1905)
John Bertram (1888–1963)

Thomas was involved in the local community. He was on the Warkworth District Highway Board, the school committee, part of the establishment of the Warkworth Library and headed the bid to form a Farmers’ Union. A public meeting was held for the purpose of considering the desirability of starting a butter or cheese factory in Warkworth. 'Mr. Sainsbury was voted to the chair and pointed out that if such a factory could be started it would be the best thing that had ever taken place in the district'. Thomas won prizes at the Mahurangi Agricultural Shows for cattle and wool, and Mary for her vegetables and jams.

In 1905 T.C. sold Park Farm and all its implements and household effects and moved the family to the Waikato. The local newspaper noted, 'the loss of Mrs Sainsbury we personally more especially regret as she has been since the inception of the paper one of our most valuable and reliable correspondents, and we take this opportunity of tendering our most sincere thanks for her valuable services'.

Sons, Denby and John, worked as undercutters in a bush felling gang. With government induced breaking up of the large estates, they went to the Waikato, and eventually they purchased a blackberry and kahikatea swamp from the Woodlands Estate. This land was on Bush Road Puketaha, later, about 1937, designated as Sainsbury Road in the district of Puketaha.

Thomas Cornock Sainsbury Jr. died in 1919 aged 75–76 in Hamilton, and was buried in the Hamilton East Cemetery. His will provided for Mary, and after her death into, into four equal parts, one to daughter Maria Lucy to be paid quarterly, the rest shared between Sarah (now Melville) and Tom Denby. His farm of 300 acres in Kirikiriroa owned jointly with son Tom, to become owned by both sons, worth 5 500 pounds.

Mary lived with her son John on the farm in Puketaha and died in 1922 aged 68, in Hamilton and was buried with her husband.