OVERSEAS FRIENDSHIP

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 63, Issue 220, 28 June 1943, Page 2

OVERSEAS FRIENDSHIP

STARTED BY GOLDEN JUBILEE. TUCKER FIRMS IN ASHBURTON. Following an unusual set of circumstances a hands-across-the-sea friendship has grown between the firms of Tnckers’s Ltd., West Street, Ashburton, and Edwin Tucker and Sons, Ltd.} maltsters and seed merchants of West Street, Ashburton, Devonshire, England. In 1925 a member of the English firm saw in the library at Ashburton, England, a copy of the Ashburton “Guardian,” New Zealand, in which was an advertisement by Tucker’s Ltd., stating that they had reached their golden jubilee, having been 50 years in business. So interested was the English firm that they wrote to Tucker’s Ltd., congratulating them on attaining their jubilee. That was the start of a correspondence which has been continued between the firms over the last IS years. After writing to the British firm in January last, Mr R. J. Tucker has received a letter dated April 4 last and a copy of the newspaper “The Mid: Devon Advertiser,” in which his letter was published. “We have watched with admiration the exploits of your magnificent division under "that truly great soldier Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, V.C., with out gallant Eighth Army in Tunisia” states the letter, “and look forward with confidence to the date when Africa will be cleared of the Nazi scourge.” This prophetic utterance was soon fulfilled.

It is also of interest to note that there is a publication in Devonshire, known as the “Ashburton Western Guardian.”