William Seldon Grey - A Mystery Solved
Recently, I was doing some research into my 3x great aunt, Mary Ann Seldon Buck née Salmon and her husband George Green Buck. They arrived in Wellington on the Birman in 1842 and were among the earliest settlers in the Hutt Valley. Mary Ann died at Taita aged 50 on 4 July 1867. On the 15 October that year, her nieces, Alice and Mary Ann Grey, left London for Wellington on the Wild Duck, and as I had never checked the exact dates, I assumed the young women had come out to New Zealand to support their uncle in The Travellers' Rest at Taita after their aunt's death. The dates suggest this is unlikely to be the case. News like this would have taken two months to get to the United Kingdom even by mail steamer . On their arrival, they would have had the double shock that not only had their aunt died, but also their older brother, William, had drowned some weeks later. These deaths must have been an horrific shock for their mother, Sarah Grey, in Bath who lost her sister and son,