Mr and Mrs Alexander Ayson (née Joan Ferguson)

Alexander Ayson was a well-loved and successful school teacher, a keen sportsman, and an active member of the Presbyterian Church, of which he became an elder. He was born at Glenshee in the Scottish Highlands in 1814 to William Ayson and his second wife, Margaret Fleming. Alexander received his early education in Glenshee, before graduating as a schoolmaster from the Normal School in Edinburgh.  After five years teaching English and Gaelic at Lossimouth, he was appointed Master of the Free Church School at Urquhart, where he taught successfully for a further ten years. Alexander married Joan Ferguson in 1844, and the couple went on to have four daughters and two sons together. Joan was also a school teacher, born in Drumforth, Forfarshire in 1821.

In 1855 the Otago Provincial Council was looking for suitable teachers to meet the needs of the rapidly increasing school-age population of Otago.  Alexander was the first of five chosen for the task, and arrived in Otago on the Southern Cross on 26 February 1856 with his family, as well as his half-sister, Margaret Robertson, and her family.

He became the first teacher in Tokomairiro, teaching ten pupils in a disused barn until a proper school house could be built. He taught on Saturday mornings in addition to weekdays, and ran a night school for members of the community who were too old to attend during the day. Remaining teaching here for ten years, he was a highly successful educator, with many of his pupils going on to achieve the highest honours in their later schooling.

Alexander retired in 1883 but remained well-respected by the community. Joan was also highly esteemed and her obituary states that ‘she strove amidst the discouragements and disappointments incidental to the life of a pioneer to make her house a true home for her family.’ Unfortunately, Joan, who had become partly blind, fell into the river while visiting her married daughter at Wyndham in 1893 and drowned. She had gone out for a walk along the riverbank and her body was discovered in the water by her daughter, apparently having slipped in when the bank gave way under her.  She was 72 and had been Alexander’s wife for 50 years.  Alexander died of a stroke two years later, aged 81.