Early Life
Massey was born in 1856 into a farming family, and grew up in Limavady, County Londonderry in Ireland. His father John Massey and his mother Marianne (or Mary Anne) Ferguson were tenant farmers who also owned a small property. His family moved to New Zealand in 1869, although Bill Massey himself remained in Ireland for a further year to complete his education. After arriving in New Zealand, Massey worked as a farmhand for some years before acquiring his own farm in 1877. In 1882 Massey married his neighbour's daughter, Christina Allen Paul (died 1932). The couple had seven children.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)