Newspaper Article 1963 – Obituary – Elsie Christophersen

Obituary

Mrs Allan Leo Christopherson [Christophersen]

Mrs Elsie Robina Hynd Mitchell Christopherson, well known as one of the Gibb sisters in the former Selphast tearooms, Hastings, before the Second World War, and later as a beauty specialist in Roachs, has died after a sudden illness. She was 50.

Mrs Christopherson was born in Edinburgh, and she came to Hastings with her family at the age of 11. She played for the West End Basketball Club and was a team captain.

She was a member of the Clan McLeod, and was a foundation member of the Hastings and District Scots’ Society. She served on the committee for several years and kept up her association with the society until the time of her death.

In 1935 she married Mr H. J. Prior and lived in Wairoa for the next four years, where she helped to establish and run her husband’s business, “Candy Land.”

Later she went to Tuai, where she ran a general store for a year and then to Porangahau, where she managed, a general store while her husband was overseas.

In 1942 she returned to Hastings and became active in the National Council of Women, the Townswomen’s Guild, and was a foundation member of the British Women’s Overseas Club, of which she remained an active member all her life.

While working at Richardson’s chemist shop in Hastings she became interested in cosmetics. Later she went to Roachs, where she became buyer in the cosmetics department and was well known for talks and demonstrations to various groups.

She was a communicant member of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, where she was also a Sunday School teacher. She remarried in September last year at St Ninian’s Presbyterian Church, Karori, to Allan Leo Christopherson, and lived at Frimley until her death.

She is survived by her husband and a daughter by her first marriage, Valerie (Mrs Burns), Wellington.