Coates Family Reunion

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30948, 3 January 1966, Page 3

Coates Family Reunion

“The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, Jan. 2. On January 8, 182 descendants of Edward and Thomas Coates will converge on the Ruatuna homestead at Matakohe of Miss Ada Coates, 80-year-old sister of Mr Joseph Gordon Coates, the country’s first New Zea-land-born Prime Minister.

The occasion is to be a quiet family gathering to commemorate the centenary of the day the Coates brothers sailed into the Otamatea arm of the Kaipara Harbour. There they bought the Unuwhao block from Manukau, the Maori chief who later became a great friend of the Coates family and many of the settlers in the district. Four families who are de-

scendants of Manukau will be the only guests who are not members of the Coates family. Miss Coates is pinning her faith on the Northland weather because many of the activities next week will be out of doors.

The day will begin with a commemorative service conducted in the Coates Memorial Church by Archdeacon M. L. A. Bull, a descendant of the pioneer who negotiated the purchase of the Coates land Archdeacon Bull was vicar of Paparoa for a time. After lunch the family will visit the near-by museum and pioneer church where Gordon Coates worshipped as a boy. In the afternoon the party will travel to Te Kawau, nine miles from Matakohe, where Thomas Coates first built his home some distance from Edward’s homestead. When they return to the original home, the family plans to walk through the paddocks to the point on the

Kaipara Harbour where Edward and Thomas landed in 1866.

Members of the family are travelling to the reunion from as far south as Nelson. Mrs Ben McCulloch, third daughter of Mr Gordon Coates, has come from America to be present.