THE CEMETERY TRUST.

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 45, 21 February 1917, Page 14

THE CEMETERY TRUST.

recreation; buriai^ and

EDUCATION.

Some exceedingly interesting history was last year supplied to Mr. Edwin Feist, Chairman of the Masterton Cemetery Trustees by Mr. R. Brown, cover* ing the formation of the Cemetery Trust. In 1875 an Act of the General Assembly was passed to provide for the management of the Grey town and Masterton public ..cemetery and park reserves. The short title was the Greytown and Mastei"tqn Public Park and Cemetery .Mangement Act, 1875. The preamble .runs':—".Whereas it is desirable that section No. 38-in the Moroa, in the Wairarapa district and province of Wellington, and section No. 19, in {.he township of Masterton in the said district, being ..lands comprised in the schedule to the .'Wellington Education Reserves Act, 1871, should be conveyed to trustees for ; the .purposes hereinafter mentioned."

PROVISIONS OF THE ACT. v The Act, provided that the Provincial Superintendent should cause a portion of each of the said sections to be surveyed and.set apart for a public cemetery for the/inhabitants of-'Greytown and "Masteftpn respectively, and the balance of each such section for a public park or recreation. ground.' The superintendent | was to appoint trustees; the cemetery trustees to be a body corporate and the park trustees to be a body corpoi'ate. .The Act proceeds that it should be law'iul for the Education Board of the Province of "Wellington to convey to the cemetery trustees their portion and to the park trustees their portion of the land. It was to be lawful for each of the said corporate bodies to receive endowments and to hold lands for the purposes of the trust. Tho Act made no provision as to the number of trustees, but fixed the quorum at three. Meetings were to be convened by advertisements in the newspaper nearest to the place of meeting, "and a chairman was \o bo appointed at each meeting. I Powers"of appointment of officers and labourers and leasing of land for twentyone .years was conferred on the trustees. \ Provision was made for a public meeting to be held annually, at which statement of accounts was to be presented. The right of interment in the cemeteries-was provided for, and for a setting apart of portions for the various religious denominations. , Any person playing at any game or sport or discharging fireaims^— save at a military funeral—became liable ' to a penalty of £5.

On the original small farm map—surveyeH by J. Hughes in 1856—sectjon. 19 was marked public reserve, and it was always believed by the early settlers that at least a portion of this land bounded by tho Waipoua Krver was promised as a cemetei-y reserve and the rest for a recreation reserve, and this belief was acted upon, as interments 'had taken place on; .that portion of land now jutting into the park on the east side. The first interment was that of Mr. Richard Irons, in about the year 1855. As the land was let on a twenty-one year's lease for grazing purposes by the Education Board to Mr. Henry Bannister before it was vested in the trustees, and the graves and enclosures ■were being damaged, a movement was made to raise the sum of £100 by public subscription to buy out the lease. "If I remember rightly," stated Mr. ■ Brown, "Mr. R. G. Williams took ari active part in the matter, and. money was soon raised. "-