A colonist remembered

Press, 27 September 1986, Page 20

A colonist remembered

This afternoon, in Auckland, on the 165th anniversary of his birth, Arthur Guyon Purchas will be remembered at St John’s College where he was once a student. The Rev. Dr Purchas (1821-1906) may. have been unique among New Zealand colonists in that, at the age of 12 in England, he resolved to come to New Zealand and to teach and help the Maori people. At 15 he was apprenticed to a doctor and later was a student at Guy’s Hospital, London. He learned the Maori language and set out to acquire all kinds of knowledge that might be useful in New Zealand. He arrived in Auckland in 1846 and became medical officer of the College Hospital. Having also studied theology at

the college, he was ordained and took charge of the parish of Onehunga. The Purchas story was told in an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 1954. It is a list of pioneering achievements: as designer and supervisor of the building of a church at Mauku; as a medical practitioner in Auckland; as a successful surgeon; as a botonist, musician, and editor of the New Zealand Hymnal; as the deviser of a system of writing music in braille; as a teacher of music at the New Zealand Institute for the Blind in Auckland; as a discoverer of a coal deposit near Auckland, and a promoter of Auckland’s water supply system; as an inventor of a flax-dressing machine; and as the designer of an internal com-

bustion engine. Archbishop Averill, Anglican Primate of New Zealand from 1925 to 1940, once described him as "the most gifted man that ever came to New Zealand.” Dr Purchas and his wife Olivia had 14 children. Many of their descendants will assemble at St John’s College today when the Bishop of Auckland, the Rt Rev. B. C. Gilbert, unveils the Purchas bust in the college library. A service at St Peter’s, Onehunga, will be conducted by the Rev. Alban Purchas, vicar of St Andrew’s, North New Brighton. Though Mr Purchas's family came independently to Canterbury, he is a descendant of Dr Purchas’s grandfather.