$400,000 legacies for museums

The Otago Museum and Otago Settlers Museum are due to receive substantial legacies, totalling about $400,000, from the estate of former Dunedin educator and vocational guidance officer Freda Carswell Stuckey.

Miss Stuckey, who lived in Cromwell for some years in retirement, died in July last year, aged 93.

She was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1916, and moved with her family to New Zealand after her father died in 1920.

She studied at the University of Otago and trained as a teacher, teaching in Lawrence, Dunedin and Timaru.

She was then appointed senior vocational guidance officer at the Department of Education's newly-established Vocational Guidance Centre in Dunedin.

A former head of mathematics at Otago Girls High School, in 1968 she gained a scholarship at the University of Illinois, in the United States, to further her training as a counsellor.

At a recent Settlers Museum board meeting, director Linda Wigley welcomed the museum's $200,000 bequest.

It is understood Otago Museum will also receive about $200,000 from the estate.

Museum exhibitions, development and planning director Clare Wilson welcomed the bequest.