Biography submitted by Bernadette Siebert.
Sophia Mary Wilson (known as May) was born in 1870 in Port Albert, the eldest daughter of John Wilson, a Lincolnshire bricklayer and his wife Sarah Scotney from Northamptonshire, England. They took up farming at Hoteo North, north of Auckland, where they lived for over 30 years.
When Sophia was 26, she married Horace Massey in 1896, at her father’s house in Hoteo North. Horace was a farmer, born in 1868 in Dargaville, son of John and Sarah Massey who arrived in 1863 on the Tyburnia with other non-conformist settlers. They lived and farmed at Maungaturoto, Northland.
Sophia and Horace lived around the Tangowahine, North Wairoa area, where they had six children:
- Douglas Stanton (1897 -1949)
- Phylis May (1899 -1981)
- Isabel Winifred (1906 -1977)
- Constance Sarah (1904 -1962)
- Horace Grantham (1910 –1982)
- Eric Basil (1913 -1914) died aged14 mths
In 1909 Horace sold his property of two thousand acres, noteworthy enough to be announced in the newspaper. He was, for a time, the secretary of the Northern Wairoa Racing Club, and was a judge at the Wairoa Agricultural Show for some years and a commissioner for the local Avoca School.
Sophia and Horace’s eldest son Douglas enlisted in NZEF in 1916 in the First World War and served in France. He was demobbed in Nov 1917 as being no longer being fit for active service due to illness. In 1919 Horace gave up dairying and sold his whole herd of 70 choice dairy cows in calf and 30 heifers. Due to ill health, Horace resigned from North Auckland Land Board.
Horace died in 1943, aged 73y and was buried in the Avoca Cemetery at Tangowahine, Kaipara. In his probate, of 4 000 pounds, he left 100 pounds to his wife Sophia and 1/3 cattle, and land near Dargaville, to son Horace 1/3 cattle, and 200 acres at Maungaru, to daughter Isabel property at New North Road in Auckland, and to son Douglas 1/3 cattle, everything else to be sold and the money for his dear wife.
Sophia lived on until the age of 91, died in 1961 in Dargaville and was buried with her husband in Avoca Cemetery. Her probate worth 9 000 pounds left the ‘Home Farm’ farmed by Massey & Son partnership and all live and dead stock to son Horace, providing he paid 1500 pounds payable in equal shares to his three sisters, then the residuary estate sold and split between them or their heirs.
Sources
- Historical BDMs
- Intentions to Marry 1896
- Findagrave
- Archway probate Horace Sophia
- PAPERS PAST Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 131, 3 June 1909, Page 6
- PAPERS PAST Observer, Volume XXXVII, Issue 16, 23 December 1916, Page 14
- PAPERS PAST New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17209, 10 July 1919, Page 5
- PAPERS PAST Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 146, 22 June 1922, Page 10
- PAPERS PAST Northern Advocate, 28 April 1933, Page 6
Military Personnel File Douglas
Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com)