Sarah Craig

Biographical information provided by Jenny Robertson for the He Tohu exhibition:

Sarah Hood was born in Scotland in 1844. In 1865 she married Andrew Craig, a cabinet maker, in Glasgow.  With their three children, Sarah and Andrew travelled to Dunedin on the James Nicol Fleming in 1873. With them were Sarah’s sister Margaret, brother-in-law  John Hopkins, and Andrew’s brother James.

Sarah and Andrew had a further four children in New Zealand. Andrew experienced short-lived bankruptcy in early 1877 and in July that year two of their sons, James (aged three) and Robert (aged nine months) died a day apart with scarlet fever/diphtheria. 

Late in 1887 the family moved to Melbourne, Victoria for work, where baby Mildred died from dysentery just a few days after arrival. There, the next year a boy with spina bifida was born to Sarah and Andrew, surviving just a few days.

In January 1890 the family returned, moving to Invercargill as Andrew’s brother James ran a successful jewellery and watchmaking business there. 

Both Sarah and Andrew died in 1916 and are buried in the Northern Cemetery Dunedin.