NINETY-NINE TO-DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 198, 22 August 1930, Page 5

NINETY-NINE TO-DAY.

OLD PARNELL RESIDENT.

MRS. WILLIAM SPEARMAN. Mrs. William Speakman, of Park Crescent, Parnell, is 99 years of age today. Mrs. Speakman arrived at Auckland with her husband in the spring of 1859, and they were landed from the sailing ship Matoaka in rowing boats at Fort Britomart. They lived for a time at Onehunga, then in Grafton Road and later opened a shop at Mechanics' Bay. The water of the harbour then came right up to the main road, and it was a favourite place for Maori canoes. In 1865 Mr. and Mre. Speakman had a shop at Newmarket, and a year later Mr. Speakman took part in the gold rush to the Thames. Forty years ago Mrs. Speakman was left a widow, and she carried on business at Newmarket. Mrs. Speakman remembers that between the Waitemata and the Manukau Harbours there were a few straggling villages. There were scarcely any roads, and in places like Grafton Road and Queen Street people used to have to use stepping-stones and planking to keep cut of the water and the mud. Where the Domain Cricket Ground' now is used to be a swamp, with flax growing in it, and where tall buildings rise on each side of Queen Street, there used to be a creek, running into the harbour at Shortland Street. Mrs. Speakman paid a tribute to the Maoris. Those in Auckland, she said, even in the troublous times of the wars in Taranaki and the Waikato, never molested the Europeans. She and her husband used to come into contact a good deal with the Maoris, but she never xelt afraid of them.

Memories of "Red Coats."

One of her vivid memories is of the part the "red coats" used to play in the life of the city. The barracks up there on "'the hill" were always a bright spot to the townsfolk. By "'the hill" Mrs. Speakman meant Albert Park, where the barracks used to be situated. Especially she recalls the lines of men swinging up Symonds Street, and away to Onehunga, where they used to embark f,or "distant" battlefields.

Proverbuilv distant fields are green, and through many long years in NewZealand Mrs. Speakman looks back with lingering affection to the days of her youth in England. She still thinks of the turnpike roads and the fenceless fields of the English 5 40's. Her first visit from the village of Appleford to London was made when she was 19, and she took the opportunity to pass by Buckingham Palace to see the place where the young Queen Victoria lived. Ninety-nine years have not passed' and left her unscathed, and though now it is difficult for her to read, she is well able to hear, as her other faculties are -bplendidly preserved.