SIXTY YEARS MARRIED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1930, Page 12

SIXTY YEARS MARRIED.

MR. AND MRS. P. DAWSON.

DIAMOND JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS

How many folk who were living in the quiet little town of Kent, England, called Igbtham, in .the year of IS7O, would remember a wedding being celebrated there of Julia Meager and Philip Dawson? Rev. Pole Hampton, who performed the ceremony, has long since passed away, and so also have most people who were present on that happy day. Yet thousands of miles away—here in . Auckland —after sixty years of married peace and harmony this old couple will, on Friday, celebrate their diamond anniversary. r

In Station Road, Avondale,. our correspondent found them,, and .it. was only fitting that they had chosen "Kent Villa" for the title of their house. Here was. unfolded a tale as interesting as could be told. Mrs. Dawson is in her eighty-eighth year and Mr. Dawson is her junior by only one yean They arrived ftom the Old Country by. the • s.s. Triumph on December 22, 1883. This , vessel foundered at' : Tiri Tiri, near Wellington, on her trip from Auckland, but no lives were lost—most passengers having disembarked at Auckland. After staying a few weeks at- Masterton, the couple settled in Pahiatua (Wairarapa), at the time there being only about' twenty Mr. Dawson opened up the first post office there, and' remained as postmaster for about eight years. At that time there was no doctor nor chemist., . v The land then called Mr. Dawson, am he, took up, a block at Mangahao, three miles away. They built a comfortable home and did well, staying there for about six years." Mr. Dawson had to clear his own land, and proudly shows a photograph, or rather a drawing, of himself in half-cleared bush. From Wairarapa they came to Mount Eden, and spent a couple of years in retirement, but this soon palled on them and they moved to Otahuhu, where for twenty years Mr. Dawson successfully grew grapes. Eventually they sold out, and some eleven years ago came to Avondale, and on Friday they will celebrate their diamond wedding, where thev made gay on the occasion of their 50 years' anniversary. Both Mr. and Mrs. Dawson are of a very quiet nature, and they have never taken part in much outside their own home. ' Their sixty years of marriage have been childless, and neither has a relative in this country, or in the Old Country. ' : ' '•> '■ ■ - .< The health of the old couple is splendid, and, except for a very slight deafness from which Mrs. Dawson suffers, it. is impossible todmagine they can be. as old as they are. Mr. Dawson is .a very , sprightly man, and proudly tells of his young days when-he was ir the Navy, how-he came to New Zealand first in 1861 and was so taken up with the country that he returned at the first opportunity. . .. , -,'•