johnblackobituary

JOHN BLACKS' OBITUARY

By the death of Mr John Black at his residence, “Burnside", Atawhai, yesterday, Nelson College has lost the last survivor of the original dozen or so students in attendance on its first opening on 7th April 1856. When the College celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1931 three of these foundation students still survived and were present – Mr Black, Mr Thomas Harley and Mr H.J. Lewis. Mr Harley died soon after on 24th September 1931, Mr Lewis on 30th March 1933. Leaving Mr Black as sole survivor during the past 11½ years.

On 9th August Mr Black celebrated his 99th Birthday, and was thus in his hundredth year at the time of his death. He had enjoyed excellent health and was up and about until Thursday last, since when he experienced a series of heart attacks. Although he was outdoors enjoying the sun on Sunday, and yesterday morning was talking and joking, his vitality was exhausted and he slipped peacefully away a little after midday.

Born in Edinburgh in 1845, Mr Black arrived in Nelson on 6th November 1850, in the barque Eden in company with his parents, Mr and Mrs J.P. Black, his brother and three sisters, and maternal grandmother, Mrs Adams (later McKenzie), who subsequently returned to Scotland. His father established a drapery business, long known as J.P. Black and Son, and situated in the premises in Trafalgar Street now occupied by Mr F.W. Huggins’s Mercers establishment. Mr Black used to relate that in his boyhood days the tide came up behind the bank of New Zealand building in Trafalgar Street. After completing his schooling at Nelson College in 1859, at that time conducted at “Newstead", Manuka Street, the first college building on the present site not being completed until 1861, Mr Black entered his father’s business. After a few years he left to gain experience with Messrs. Buckley and Nunn, the leading Melbourne drapers. Apart from this absence, his entire life from the age of five was spent in Nelson. On his father’s death in 1889 at the age of 82, Mr Black became the proprietor of the family business and carried it on until he retired in 1904 to settle down to rural life at Atawhai. In 1879 he married Miss Eliza Maria Fowler, who pre-deceased him in 1934, and by whom he had a family of six sons and two daughters. The surviving children are Mr J.F. Black (Tauranga), Mr H.B. Black (Invercargill), Mr L.S. Black (Atawhai), Mr R.P. Black (Wellington) and Mrs Ernest Wood (Nelson). One son, Mr H.C. Black, was accidentally killed in fighting a bush fire at Whangamoa in January last.

Mr Black was highly esteemed by a wide circle of old friends. He took no part in public affairs until in his extreme old age he was invited to participate in various functions. On 3rd June 1939, with Mr Sholto Duncan as pilot he was a passenger at the age of 94 in the first flight of the Nelson Aero Club's first plane, and on returning to terra firma made a speech expressing his pleasure at having his first flight in an aeroplane. On 1st November 1941, Mr Black unveiled the memorial stone placed on the breastwork at Wakefield Quay to mark the spot by the old harbour entrance where Capt. Arthur Wakefield had first landed a century before to found the Nelson settlement. Mr Black's main interest during his 40 years of retirement at Atawhai was bees and horticulture. He took a particular interest in a fine old oak tree on his property -- one of the finest in Nelson – that according to his inquiries was planted in 1845, the year of his own birth.

Although of Scottish descent on the paternal side, the Blacks being a sept of the Macgregor’s and entitled to wear the tartan of that famous and long proscribed clan, Mr Black had a dash of French Huguenot blood through his grandmother, Mrs William Black, of Glasgow, daughter of the Rev. Robert Rentoul, Ordained by the Scottish Presbytery in 1772, and his wife Louise le Blanc. The grandfather of this Rev. Mr Rentoul was another Robert Rentoul, a French Huguenot who sought refuge in Scotland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and many of whose descendants have been Presbyterian clergymen, included among the number being the late Professor J.L. Rentoul of Melbourne University Divinity College, and a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. The late Mr Black's great-aunt, Mrs Catherine Rentoul, widow of Major William Rentoul, of the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who fought under Sir John Moore in the Peninsular war, emigrated to Nelson with her family about 1860 and resided here until her death in 1883. Thus besides himself very nearly seeing the century round in Nelson, the late Mr Black had a grandmother and a great-aunt resident in the city at different periods.

The late Mr Black's sisters reached ripe ages, though nothing like so great as his own. The eldest, Mrs Robert Black, of Franklyn Street, died in 1917, aged 83; the second, widow of the Rev. John Campbell, former rector of the Christchurch High School and first headmaster of Napier High School, died at Atawhai in 1923, aged 87; and the youngest, Mrs Henry McMahon, of Riwaka and Richmond, died in 1929, aged 82. Mr Black’s mother died in 1861, aged 50. His father remarried very late in life to Miss Eliza H. Scadden, and had two further children, Mrs James Baxter, now residing in Nile Street East, and Mr J.P. Black of the New Zealand Military Service Appeal Board, Wellington.

In bygone days when Nelsonians took more elbowroom around their habitations, Mr Black's father had the entire southern half of the Waimea Road, Hampden Street, Kawai Street, and Franklyn Street block for his house and grounds, the northern half being occupied by Mr Short, whose residence subsequently became College House. Old Nelsonians still survive who can recall archery shoots in Mr J.P. Black's Plantation, that citizen having distinguished himself in the competitions of the Royal Company of Archers in Edinburgh before his departure for New Zealand.

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