Obituary
With the death at Orange last week of Miss Fanny Jane Tom, at the age of 86, a link with the historic past was severed. Death followed a fall which broke the old lady's leg. Miss Tom was born at the old Cornish settlement of Byng, near Orange, and was a niece of the late William and James Tom, who, with William Lidster, discovered the first payable gold at Ophir in 1851. She was a granddaughter of 'Parson' Tom, the pioneer Methodist lay preacher of the West — long before the days of actual parsons out that way. Miss Tom, who lived with her sister, Miss Kate Tom, for the last 50 years, was a devoted Church worker. A married sister, Mrs. E. A. Lidster, of Orange, and a brother, James (Brisbane), survive in addition to the unmarried sister.