Marianne Williams, eldest child of Wright Coldham, Yorkshire businessman and mayor of Nottingham, was only 16 when her mother died. She had to take over running a large establishment with its domestic staff.

January 20, 1818 Marianne married Lieutenant Henry Williams, a retired Royal Navy officer. Henry offered himself to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) as a missionary to New Zealand, with her full support. Marianne trained as a maternity nurse, learned to cook, and studied Moravian methods of teaching and organisation. They sailed for Australia in 1822.

August 1823 they arrived in the Bay of Islands. We know most of their story from her letters home. Their 1st house was a hastily erected small raupo-reed hut, Marianne wrote, “Mr Fairburn and my husband laid me a boarded floor in the bedroom before night; and I never reposed more comfortably.” A week later she had to accommodate Samuel Marsden, Mr Kemp, the Maori chief Hongi Hika, and 5 Maori girls! “My visitors ate up my whole batch of newly baked bread . . . and the boat’s crew of 4 had enough also.” Her “kitchen”, a draughty canvas lean-to across the yard with an open fire, camp oven and heavy iron pots.

Food was stretched to feed unexpected guests, and a growing number of Maori pupils who came to the schools she and Henry opened. She taught, missionaries, settlers and Maori girls the skills of reading, writing, simple arithmetic, needlework, laundry, cooking, hygiene and most importantly the gospel. She was nurse and midwife, dressing burns and boils, bandaging cuts and sprains, bringing the sick under her own roof for nursing. She made the love of God known through both teaching and love in action.

She withstood attacks by hostile Maori, endured long absences by Henry, who accompanied Maori war parties in efforts to make peace, and birthed 11 children, all of whom grew to healthy adulthood in spite of there being no doctors and a high infant mortality rate.

When Henry was dismissed by the CMS in May 1850, she faced removal from Paihia to Pakaraka with the same courage she had shown so often. When she lay dying, hundreds of Maori came and quietly surrounded the house, waiting to pay their last tribute to the woman whom they knew as “mata”, or “mother”. She went to her reward, 4 days after her 86th birthday. She lies beside Henry in Holy Trinity churchyard, Pakaraka. On their headstone are the words:

“They who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever” - Daniel 12:3.

BORN:12 December 1793, Yorkshire, England.

DIED: 12th of Tevet, 5782, Pakaraka, New Zealand.