S. L. Laybourn

Biography contributed by Colyn Storer (née Morley)

Sarah Louise Laybourn (née Harvey) was born 9 October 1856 at Parnell, Auckland, the youngest child of Charles Harvey and Rebecca Caroline (née Sheppard). Her parents were married on 7 Dec 1843 at Geelong Victoria and shortly after they went to Auckland, New Zealand, where their first four children were born. They returned to Victoria for a couple of years where their daughter Unica Ann was born, before returning to Auckland where two more daughters, including Sarah, were born. Sarah's father died when she was a baby and her mother remarried a couple of years later. 

Sarah married Adam Laybourn on 17 April 1885 at his father Adam’s home in Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand. He had ironmonger and hardware businesses, firstly in Auckland and then Te Aroha. After he retired from business, he became a Home Mission worker in the Methodist church at Rahotu, Waiuku, and Taneatua and Waddington. Sarah's obituary in the New Zealand Methodist Times in October 1943 records that she shared with him in this ministry. She was involved in the Ladies Guild of the Wesleyan and Methodist church throughout her life. They had one son, Adam Harvey Laybourn, and three daughters, Muriel, Ida and Florence, who all survived Sarah. 

Sarah was one of the many beneficiaries of the will of her sister Unica Ann Morley, who died in Melbourne in 1933. After her husband’s death in 1928 Sarah lived with her daughter Ida at Rahotu, and died there on 29 September 1943. She was buried at Opunake Cemetery after a service at the Rahotu Methodist church on 1 October. 

Sources

Find my Past
BDM Online NZ 
Papers Past ('Obituary', New Zealand Herald, 30 August 1928; death notice, 30 September 1943)
The New Zealand Methodist Times ('Within the Veil', 30 October 1943)
Opunake cemetery records