Mrs Macfie

Biographical information provided by Briar Barry for the He Tohu exhibition:

This is likely to be Sarah Macfie (nee Webb), the wife of John Macfie. John owned the local Dunganville Hotel and Sarah ran a sweet shop from within it. Unfortunately the Hotel burnt down in the 1880s.

Sarah was born in England around 1840. She moved to New Zealand with her first husband, Benjamin Larcombe in 1864. She had seven children with Benjamin but two of them were stillborn. The relationship with Benjamin broke down and he moved to New South Wales, Australia sometime around 1870.

Scandalously, that same year Sarah gave birth to daughter Alice McGinty, whose father was John McGinty. Could it have been that Sarah was having an affair with John? Sarah and John had another daughter in 1871 and they married in 1872, with Sarah claiming she was a widow (she was not!).

Just like Benjamin before him, John moved to New South Wales in 1873, effectively abandoning Sarah. However in 1880 she married a third time, to John Macfie and gave birth to a daughter, Ellen Ethel. A son for the couple followed in 1882 but he died aged one. 

Sarah Macfie died in 1904.