Mr. George Merritt Pilkington. Master of Silverstream School, was born near Chicago, United States of America, in 1868. He was brought to the colony as a child by his parents, and had the charge of a small school at Rakaia for eleven years prior to his appointment to Silverstream in 1902. Mr. Pilkington was married, in 1893, to a daughter of Mr. Charles Hadfield, of Christchurch, and has three sons.