Biography

ROBERT STANTON SMITH c1847 – 2 August 1897

Robert Rogers Smith and Anna Stanton, Robert Stanton Smith’s parents, lived near the Suffolk/Norfolk boundary in England. Their first child was born in Ellingham, Norfolk. Robert Stanton Smith was christened 27 May 1848 probably in Baylham, Suffolk where the family lived for some time and most of the children were christened. Later the Smith family moved to Stowmarket and in the 1861 census the family was split between Stowmarket and Ditchingham where the family had a mill. Robert was in the care of his oldest sister with another sister and brother in Ditchingham, possibly the grandfather’s old home. The occupation of miller seems to have been with the family for several generations.

He emigrated to NZ sometime after the 1871 census. In 1881 the Dunedin Knox Parish Registers show him at the age of 33 marrying Eliza Ann Jeffrey, a widow (39, n&eacutee Petrie, born Scotland).

He lived in Duncan St, North East Valley, Dunedin from 1890 to 1897 when his occupation was miller.

Robert’s three brothers and a sister settled in NZ, one sister moved to Melbourne and four sisters died at a young age in England of consumption (TB). Thomas, a baker in Wellington, and the youngest sister in England, had families.

Eliza buried Robert (aged 50) with her first husband in 1897, and was interred herself with her husbands in 1932, aged 92. The gravestone shows the date of Robert’s death as 1898, it is likely that the lower half of the stone was not engraved until after Eliza’s death and that the year of Robert’s death was mistaken. The death is recorded as being in 1897 in both the cemetery records and the New Zealand births, deaths and marriages index.