Category: Lang – Elsie 1886-1976

Highland Games

Every year in Waipu, on New Years Day, there is a Highland Games. More Scottish than the Scots, the descendants of the big migrations celebrate their scottishness with a festival of bagpipes, highland dancing, tossing the caber, throwing the wheatsheaf, etc. etc.   It’s also often a family reunion, as the family who have left come back for summer at the Beach, and to see each other. In 1933, on New Year’s Day, one such […]

Letter 1958 Aunt Elsie – Donald Lang

1958 Dear Donald, I expect Myra has told you “all the news that’s fit to write”, as the N.Y.Times says. It was nice to get your letter and hear about your work and all those interesting people you are meeting, but I am glad you have Rabbie Dyer to have a Pie-Island chat with sometimes. Give my regards to Rabbie and tell him we do miss his lissom form from Lang’s Beach. Does he remember […]

Letter 1968-12-02 Aunt Elsie – Donald Lang

Langs Beach Waipu N.Z. 2-12-68 Dear Donald, We all (Elsie,Myra,Hilda) thank you for your kind letter of sympathy, of course we don’t realise it yet. Annie was the one who never went away from home until your Father was married, and after a while, when our Mother came home again, Hilda stayed with her for the remainder of Ma’s life. (1952) Altho sudden, Annie’s death was not unexpected, we knew she had a bad cardiac […]

The Aunts

Story written by Jennifer Lang The Aunts were my father’s Aunts on his father’s side. My grandfather was the third child of eight; six girls and two boys. When he was thirteen, in 1904, his father died, leaving my great grandmother  with eight children aged from 18 down to 3 and the family sheep farm. The six girls, in order, were Elsie, who at 18, was already learning to be a nurse in Whangerei (about […]