Margaret Hamilton

8
Thomas died on 18 December 1885 of cirrhosis of the liver, and was buried in the Anglican Cemetary at Drury. Margaret continued to farm the property with the assistance of her two eldest sons, and gradually the family left home. Thomas married Caroline Anne Ballard of Buckland on 3 November 1900, and they lived in Paeroa and Maungatoroto for a number of years before returning to farm at Pukekohe East. Samuel married Annie Amelia Fitness in Eltham on 11 August 1908, and they also returned to Pukekohe East to farm. Francis Robert (Frank) had died at the age of five, and Mary Margaret (Minnie) suffered a fall from a horse as a teenager, was crippled, and never married. Elizabeth (Lizzie) married William Thomas Prowse on 28 August 1897, and they farmed a sheep station at Aria, near Te Kuiti, for most of their lives. Elinor (Nellie) married Henry Andrew Smith, a widower with five children, on 17 February 1898, and lived at Pukekohe East for a number of years before moving to the Waikato. Emily married Frederick Willis and lived in Taumaranui, and Lucy married John Pascoe and lived in Northland and the King Country, where she was a sr_hoolteacher. Annie, the youngest, married Willie Francis (Frank) Seymour in 1915, and lived in Auckland until her death at the relatively early age of 51. As each of the children married, they were given a family Bible by Margaret, and these remain treasured possessions of their descendants. Margaret moved around her various children in the years after her farm and home were sold, and died in Samuel's home on 29 August 1916, and was buried beside her husband at Drury. She is remembered by her surviving grandchildren as always wearing black clothes, a typical garb for Irish widows, and with fresh violets woven into her hat.