MORRINSVILLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 226, 24 September 1934, Page 9

MORRINSVILLE.

60 YEARS' PROGRESS.

WILDERNESS TO PASTURE. NAMED 1 ' AFTER MORRIN FAMILY. (From Our Own Correspondent.! MORRINSVILLE, Sunday. The decision by Morrinsville district residents to celebrate during October the 60th anniversary of the beginnings of settlement in the district is a reminder of the tremendous strides made in land settlement in the Auckland Province during comparatively recent times. Sixty years ago, in 1874, the Morrinsville district was a wilderness of scrubcovered hills and swampy plains without inhabitants of any sort. To-day Morrinsville's butter factories turn out an average of 20 tons of butter every day of the year, its railway station handles more livestock than any station in the province, and its fortnightly stock sales are unsurpassed as markets for all classes of stock.

Tens of thousands of acres of land in the centre of which the present town of Morrinsville now stands were purchased from the Maoris GO years ago by Messrs. Thomas and Samuel Morrin, who were then promineui in the commercial life of Auckland. They called their property the Lockerbie Estate, and the village that sprang up along the road traversing their block was given the name of Morrinsville. The advent of the railway from Hamilton in 1884 removed the former drawback of isolation, but closer settlement did not begin in earnest until about 30 years ago. In 1908 Morrinsville was large enough to bccome a town district, and in 1921 it rose to the status of a borough. The present borough of ISOO people is the centre of a particularly closely settled farming district. In planning to celebrate their district's diamond jubilee Morrinsville people point with justifiable pride to the fact that the growth of the town of Morrinsville has been due solely to the progress of farming in the neighbourhood. The town did not owe its origin to the encampment of troops or the establishment or settlements of Maori War veterans, as some other Waikato towns did; nor had it a mining boom as its origin, as in the case of towns of the Thames Valley goldfields. Like the celebrated "Topsy" of literature, Morrinsville "just growed." It is still growing in importance as a commercial centre.