Archives-August 1930

Death of "Aunt" Ninnie

Young

Descendant of Bounty

Midshipman

From

Our Own Correspondent

Norfolk Island, July 25

I have just returned home from one of the most moving and picturesque ceremonies I have ever witnessed - the burial, after sudden death, of one of the remaining Pitcairners.

Old Miss Young - or Aunt Ninnie, was she was generally and most affectionately known - was actually born upon Pitcairn, and brought to Norfolk when she was only two or three years old, when the descendants of the Bounty mutineers were transferred from their overcrowded island to Norfolk.

Her father, who was appointed first magistrate and leader of his people upon their arrival here, was grandson of the Midshipman Young, who together with the First Lieutenant Christian, lead the mutiny upon the Bounty, cast adrift the captain

and other officers, sailed Bounty back to Tahiti, where they took native wives magnificent women of a magnificent race and sailed further on to Pitcairn where they sank the ship and settled ashore.

Young came, no doubt, from a middle class family, where children were taught to speak almost reverently of their parents; and that tradition was evidently maintained in the succeeding generations, for dear Miss Young would talk to me of “Dear Papa” or “Dear Mamma” in the best Victorian manner, and I loved to listen to her.

Her name, all her life long, was synonymous with charity, goodness and the deepest religious feeling and, islanders and mainlanders alike, we all had tears in our eyes as we stood around her grave this morning in the quaint old cemetery, beneath the wide blue sky, and joined in the singing of that wonderful anthem, “I was an hungered and ye gave me meat... I was sick and in prison and ye visited me ...”

Those words might have been written for the dear old lady and, sung in the rich, warm, colourful voices, harmonising and blending in the passion of grief of her lifelong friends and neighbours, were almost intolerably moving.

It is a memory I shall carry with me

wherever I may go.

Recent Visitors to San Franciscoo These two Fijian village hheadman created much interest in San Ffrancisco recently when they arrived to attttend the International Conference of Seveenth Day Adventists.

Residents of Fiji, to whom tlthey are well known, will be interested to leeam that the American papers said their narmes were Ratu Jiali Tikowale and Setareki Slhadrack Cevaca; that they were the grandisons of cannibals; and they were “dre:ssed in English coats with smart cravats amd short skirts instead of trousers”.

They dressed and posed ffor this photograph in San Francisco.