The MacLeans and Betsy Ewing - something of a mystery.

 In Dunedin's Andersons Bay Cemetery is a grave containing four people. Elizabeth Ewing died on May 1st, 1915; Agnes Alexandrina MacLean died on December 19, 1929; Norman MacLean died on February 2nd, 1933; Sarah MacLean died on March 6, 1963.

Officially, Elizabeth Ewing is in a different plot, but is commemorated on the difficult to read gravestone of the MacLeans, who have described her as "a good and faithful friend."  She was the MacLeans' servant.

DEATHS.

EWING - on May 1 at Dunedin, Elizabeth (Betsy) Ewing, late of Borestone, Bannockburn, Scotland, the good and faithul friend of the Longlands MacLean family, with whom she resided for 64 years; aged 81 years. Privately interred yesterday the 3rd inst. A. J. Wynn and Hope, undertakers.  -Otago Daily Times, 4/5/1915.

From the above, we can work out that Betsy joined the MacLean family aged 17.

Norman MacLean's burial record states that he was from Scotland and had been in New Zealand for 50 years when he died, which has him arriving in 1883. His occupation was that of "coal merchant," and newspaper advertisements confirm this.

DEATHS

MACLEAN. — On December 18th, 1929, at the residence of her son (Norman W. Maclean), 45 Norman street, Anderson’s Bay, Agnes Alexandria, beloved widow of Walter Norman Maclean, of Gourock Castle, Scotland; in her 82nd year. “At rest.” Private interment. — R. McLean and Son, undertakers.  -Evening Star, 18/12/1929.

A genealogy site which I have been unable to refind confirms a fascinating detail of Agnes' origins.  The online burial record states that she was a native of Russia and a widow.  The 1980s transcripts from the local Genealogical Society (an outstanding resource which should be digitised) state that she was a Russian princess.

Ancestry.com gives Agnes' name as Annuitia Alexandrina Bakova, (1848-1929), born in Moscow, and states that she and Walter Norman MacLean (1847-1884), born on the Isle of Islay, Scotland, became the parents in 1882 of an Agnes MacLean who died at Dunedin in 1949.

Wikitree states that Agnes married Walter at Gourock, Scotland in 1877 at the age of 30. She was born "about 1848" in Russia, daughter of Bernard Alexander Bakov and Amricia Nasiloff. She appears with the name Agnes Thoms in the British census 1861, resident at Gourock Castle, Scotland.

Annuitia Alexandrina Bakova. Photo from Ancestry.com.

My best guess for all of the above is that Walter Norman MacLean died shortly before Agnes, her son Norman, and their maidservant Betsy arrived in New Zealand in 1883. Further research shows him recorded as dying in 1884 which is close enough.

Also sharing the grave is Sarah MacLean, whose record shows her living at the same address recorded for Agnes and Norman when she died in 1963, occupation: "widow."