When you finally make a hole in that brick wall it comes down fast. With the idea that these missing Smith girls like to marry younger men and lie about their age I went through my list of Intentions to Marry for Alice Smith and one caught my eye. An Alice Smith marrying a John Fisher in Christchurch in 1908. She said she was forty and mine would have been a few months short of forty-three, but given the outcome with Mary a definite possibility.
I finally viewed Mary Hill nee Smith's probate yesterday along with her husband's and both of them mention several of Mary's sisters in their wills, Alice Fisher ( I was on the right track), Jane Toohey (my gt grandmother and not in WCF's will which he wrote in 1944 as she was deceased) and Martha, although the husband calls her Matilda in his. I will still get the marriage certificate for absolute proof.
Only Agnes Smith born 1868 to find now. She is not mentioned in either will so was probably deceased before 1935 when Mary wrote hers. I still fancy the one that married George Edward Ormond in Gisborne in 1917. He died in 1929 and she is last seen on an ER in 1935 still in Gisborne, no remarriage and no death. Also not in same cemetery as her husband. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and purchase the certificate.
Cheers
Denise