St Pauls Papanui Cemetery - Christchurch City Libraries

little boys, William and Sydney’, and Elliott Heathfield Lane, 56, who died on 14
January 1922.
Row D
No. 65
Jackson
Robert Simeon Jackson was born in 1838 at St. Petersburg’s, Russia. He was educated
at a small town on the Gulf of Riga where he became proficient in English, French
and German. His parents were Isabella Mary and Alexander Sherwood Jackson. At
the time Alexander Jackson was an officer in the Russian Imperial Army.
The family arrived in Canterbury on the Duke of Portland, on 26 September 1851,
and from 1852-57, Robert attended Christ’s College. His father, commonly known as
‘Russian’ Jackson, was, with Sir Michael Le Fleming, in charge of the Easedale Nook
run.
Robert Jackson became a clerk with the Union Bank of Australia. This was ‘an
occupation which he found of great value … in later life in instilling habits of
punctuality and method’. Later he was a farm labourer at Easedale Nook He ‘met with
domestic trouble’ and decided to enter the Anglican Church. Bishop Harper ordained
him deacon in 1865, sending him to the cure of Prebbleton-with-Templeton. On
Trinity Sunday 1867 he was ordained priest at St. Michael’s church. He resigned his
cure in 1868 as he was ‘feeling symptoms of declining health’.
Jackson was a clergyman of ‘outstanding quality’ who longed to undertake
missionary work. From 1870-74 he was a missionary in the Diocese of Melanesia.
Here the energy of his character found an ample field for exercise, while his
powers as a linguist, which enabled him to acquire the dialect without
difficulty, made him a valuable acquisition to the mission.
He devoted himself to the work ‘with the warmest interest and it was not without a
feeling of deep reluctance that, in 1874, he was compelled by the state of his health to
return to New Zealand’.
Jackson left Norfolk Island on the Dauntless and arrived in Auckland on 26 January
1874. In Auckland Bishop Harper offered him employment as his private secretary.
Jackson was the bishop’s secretary from 1875-78, also acting as diocesan treasurer
and secretary to the Church Property Trustees. At the beginning of 1878 Jackson
moved to the Papanui parsonage, the home of the Rev Frederick George Brittan,
where, ‘in the seclusion of a quiet home and with such comfort as the pure air and
country life could afford, he spent the remainder of his days’. His last sermon at St.
Paul’s, on Whitsunday, 9 June 1878, on behalf of the Melanesian Mission, ‘was
characterized by all his old fire and vigour; it will long be remembered by those that
heard it’.
Jackson rose on the last morning of his life, had breakfast and could not be prevailed
upon to retire till the normal time, though he was evidently sinking fast. His official
St. Paul’s Papanui Cemetery
2007
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