Mary Salmond was considered the first European woman to ever see the Tokomairiro Plain. She was born in Carmyllie, Scotland, on 7 January 1822 and grew up to be a tall, active, and muscular woman, full of vigour and life. At the age of 27 she married a farmer, John Salmond. Within just three weeks of their marriage in May 1849, the couple set sail for Otago on the Larkins, landing in Port Chalmers on 11 September 1849. They travelled in the forecabin with 21 others, rather than in steerage, and were not travelling light; John brought with him a large-scale model of James Watt’s steam engine that he had won in a raffle. Now in the museum collection, the model is very heavy and must have been awkward to transport as well as quite useless for pioneering life.
Mary and John lived in Dunedin for a year before taking up land in Tokomairiro that they called ‘Karnford’. The journey south proved epic. ‘The way was along the beach to Taieri Ferry. Here Mrs Salmond was left with the Maoris all night, as Mr Salmond had gone back to look for some of the cattle he had lost on the journey, and which he was taking to the farm at Toko …’ Next day they were ferried across the Taieri River by Maori canoe and along Lake Waihola, entering Tokomairiro Plain through the Gorge. Mary’s first sight of the Plain was of waving flax and tussock ‘under the light of the setting sun imprinting such a photograph on her memory that she never forgot it.’
John built a wattle-and-daub house at ‘Karnford’ and ploughed the first paddock ever cultivated in the district. Times were tough for the couple during their first few years in Tokomairiro when there was often a shortage of flour in Otago. During one such occasion the Salmond family lived for six weeks on just rice and milk. John became bedridden around 1862, and remained so for 37 years until his death on 8 September 1899. He was laid to rest three days later, which was coincidentally 50 years to the day since the family had arrived in Dunedin.
Mary must have been a formidable woman to hold the farm and family together during her husband’s long illness. Her obituary describes her as ‘the type of woman who makes history - a pioneer woman who was prepared with her husband to share the trials, dangers, or hopes and joys that a journey to a far country might mete out to them … Sturdy and independent, she was a true type of those whom the colony recalls as the most stable of her founders, and whose seal is set upon her history.’ Mary died on 12 June 1906, aged 84, outliving all but one of their three children, William Henry Salmond.
Mrs John Salmond (née Mary Mitchell)