How it all started...

At the 2008 Blair Family Reunion in Nelson my mother's cousins Pat McPhail and Pam Smith spoke about Great Aunt Jessie who was a missionary in India.  They had two pages from her bible and a copy of the card from her memorial service along with a cross-shaped bookmark.  They only knew a little about Jessie, that she had left home at 23 years of age, and had died of Typhoid on the mission field in Poona, India.  I recall being quite taken by the story and determined to try and find out more.  What had she looked like?  What had motivated her to leave New Zealand for India? What kind of person was she? I obtained a letter published in The Outlook that Jessie had written home in April 1900, and a eulogy at a prayer meeting also published in The Outlook after her death from the Presbyterian Archive in Dunedin.  I then trawled through Papers Past for any reference to Jessie and the Otago Blairs and was pleased to find further material to feed what was then bordering on an obsession - to 'find' Jessie Blair.