EARLY WAIRARAPA

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 105, 4 May 1926, Page 3

EARLY WAIRARAPA

(To tho Editor.)

Bir, —The most interesting and informative article of. Mr. W. ; A. Edwards (under above caption) appearing in your issue, Saturday, Ist May, adds a further now chapter to a story yet to bo told—that of early settlement days on the Wairarapa Plain—a story long )o«t hlght of, when easier to obtain. % have just come across a clipping from your own journal of 21st May, 1912, which reads:— "Forty-eight years ago to-day (states a Masterton paper) the-first band of bona fide settlers arrived in Masterton. They consisted of the late Mr. Michael Dixon, the late Mr. John. Cole, Mrs. Adams (then Miss Dixon), and Mr. David Dixon. The party left Wellington on foot, and driving cattle for sottiers who had taken up land in the Masterton Small Farm Block. They were a fortnight on the road, and; arrived at their destination on Sunday, 21st May, 1854. There, was merely a track over the Eimutakas, and the party, had to ford the whole of ■ the. rivers by the way. A few months later Mr. James Wrigley arrived, and was followed by the lorns and; Benuington families. Then came the Bentleys, the Joneses, the Chamberlains, the Daggs, the Cranes, and, later, Mr. Joseph Masters (late M.P.C. for Wairarapa), after whom the town was named. The late Mr. Masters was orfe of the trustees of the Small Farm Association, and it was on this account (as its principal advocates) that Sir George Grey named the town after him. The remaining trustees were the late Charles Booking Carter (after whom the town o£ Carterton is named),.' Henry Humphries. Jackson (who was a'member of the original New Zealand Company's survey party to arrive in Port-Nicholson, in 1839, in advance of the immigrants landing in 1840), and Alfred William Renall (in 1858, M.P. for the Hutt). The forty-acre rural sections (and town acres going with same). were not available (although already balloted for) until some months after the arrival of the first party." / ■':'..•.■' Being the chance happy possessor of the possibly "only extant copy, of the late Joseph Mastera's address to the electors of Wairarapa, dated. 24th May, 1870 (printed at the "Mercury", office, Greytown) and,issued in'pamphlet form under the title ,"A, Short Ac-count-of ithe Wairarapa Small Farm As-i sociation"—and countersigned by him —I-took occasion, a quarter of a century ago nearly, of reprinting the same in the columns-of the "New; Zealand Mail," as its Wairarapa .travelling representative, and have seen.it quoted, as "original finding" of other persons, several times since then; but, all such information being the rightful property of any who choose io call it into aid inpiecing together the story of early Wairarapa settlement—as I have used all similar information falling. to my own hands (with due acknowledgment, wherever possible), I do not feel aggrieved. Trusting more "Early Wairarapa" comes your.way, for publication.—l am, etc., ■ ■ • .- •:■ ■■■■ ■: ■■:■ N.J.B. 2nd May.' .; . : ;' ; . ' ', .' .