52 Ancestors - Week 19 - Mother's Day - Eda Sarah Edwards
Sometimes we learn things about our ancestors in the strangest places. The last place I expected to hear about my great grandmother, Eda Sarah Edwards, was during a eulogy at my own mother's funeral. My mother had been a wonderful grandmother and her grandmother, Eda, had been her role model. Eda Edwards was born at Taita in the Hutt Valley, New Zealand in 1886. She was the youngest child of John, a carpenter, the local undertaker and small farmer. John had arrived in New Zealand as a child in 1842. Her mother, Mary Ann Grey, had emigrated from Bath in 1867 and had married John within two months of her arrival in Wellington. When she was aged about 6, Eda’s father died suddenly on his way home from Wellington. Where Mary Ann and her family lived immediately after John's death is unclear though they may have remained at Taita for some years before moving across the Rimutaka Ranges to the Wairarapa. She may have met her future husband, Archibald Forbes McMinn, in Carterton ar