ONLY FOUR LEFT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 225, 22 September 1932, Page 9

ONLY FOUR LEFT.

SETTLERS OF NORSEWOOD.

STURDY BAND OF IMMIGRANTS

DIAMOND JUBILEE CELEBRATED.

Ther diamond jubilee of Norsewood, Eawke's Bay, was celebrated yesterday. It is recalled that the sailing ship Hooding, left Christiania, Norway, in May, 1872, with a band of Norwegian immigrants to take up settlement in the Seventy Mile Bush. They arrived in Napier on September 20 of the same year!

Napier was then a very small place. After several days' journey by bullock "rays the settlers arrived to take up their 40-acre sections in the district 70 miles from Napier. Later they named it forsewood. There they literally carved weir homes out of the bush. .

In 1897 the silver jubilee was held, when most 0 f the settlers, with the nrs?t: generation, were present. Ten years ago the golden jubilee was celebrated, a »a a second generation attended, but twenty-five of the original "and were then surviving.. At the diamond jubilee this week only tour original survivors were present, there was a large attendance of residents and visitors. The memorial stone 0 mark the fiftieth anniversary was erected beneath an oak tree, which was 1897 ted t0 mark the silver J ubilee in t»97. Another inscription was unveiled to mark the passing of a further decade, speeches were made by Mr. Ole Ericksen, enairman of the jubilee conimitte, Mr. A- E. Jull, M.P., Mr. M. E. Wug, Norwegian vice-consul, and Mr. L. D. Vahl, !ice-consul for Denmark. Pastor J. J. Lutheran clergyman, also took Part. The speakers commended the j?jj|s °f' the pioneers in overcoming faculties as an example for'the prese nt generation.

the only four surviving pioneers w-uay are: "Mrs. A. Olsen, Mrs. I. Herbert, aiid Messrs. E. Laurvig and C. E. The two latter planted a Aoi-wegia-n spruce tree in the Norsewood ttnool grounds to mark the occasion;