Biography

William Cowie 1840-1911

William was originally from the kirktown of Alvah in Banffshire, Scotland. Later he, or maybe his whole family, moved to Irvine in Ayrshire. But William left Scotland in 1863, when he was twenty-three, to come to New Zealand. In Dunedin, he started work at the Post Office as a ‘letter carrier’, rising to the position of senior postal clerk. He is described as a ‘faithful and unobtrusive’ worker. However, William did have one great adventure–he went on a trip to San Francisco on a mailboat. He returned ‘rich with marvellous travellers’ tales of the New World’ and, after discovering maple syrup in the United States, ‘an exotic taste for the syrup on his pork’. He married Margaret Elizabeth Curle in 1880.

When William died in 1911, his obituary (Otago Witness, 29 November 1911) remembered him as a widely respected and honourable official, a crack-shot with a rifle, and a keen bowler: ‘He was the hero of many hard-fought battles on the greensward and retained his keenness to the last. His fidelity to duty was equally conspicuous in his work as an office-bearer in Knox Church, where he will be much missed. The steadfast nature and his genial and unobtrusive manner were such as to make friends of whom he has a troop.’

Reference: Nothing like a dame: A biography of Dame Daphne Purves, by Molly Anderson.

— Other burials recorded at the same site:
Robert CURLE d. 1895,
David CURLE d. 1899,
Elizabeth Watson CURLE d. 1901,
James CURLE d. 1925,
James Arthur COWIE d. 1926,
Margaret Elizabeth COWIE d. 1942,
Adeline COWIE d. 1952,
Irvine Watson COWIE d. 1956,
Elizabeth Curle KREFT d. 1963,
and Martin Albert KREFT d. 1965.