Mrs Murdoch McKenzie (née Jane Sinclair)

This photograph depicts early settler Jane Sinclair and her daughter Jessie Ann who was born in New Zealand. Jane Sinclair was born in Scotland about 1841. She travelled to Otago on board the Victus and arrived in Dunedin in 1864. Jane married Murdoch McKenzie at First Church, Dunedin in 1868. Together the couple had six children: Jessie Ann, Alexander, Donald, Helen, Christina and Robina Lily.

The family lived in Taieri Beach where Murdoch worked as a farmer and one of the first storekeepers. Murdoch also acquired land in Akatore where Jessie Ann ran the homestead. Little is known about Jane’s personal life. As the wife of a pioneer farmer and storekeeper who travelled long journeys to acquire goods for his store, Jane most likely faced difficulty raising six children in the rural, harsh landscape of early Otago. 

Following the death of her husband in 1894 she and the family moved to Dunedin, where they lived in George Street. Jane died in 1925. Her neighbours remembered her as a ‘Good Samaritan’ and someone with ‘considerable nursing abilities in an emergency’. She is buried in Andersons Bay Cemetery.