RIDE TO THE LAKE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20176, 20 February 1940, Page 6

RIDE TO THE LAKE

FIRST WHITE WOMAN

63-YEAR-OLD CLAIM

MRS. W. A. RICHARDSON

In an obituary reference to the late Mrs. Alice Martin Smith, published recently in the Herald, it was mentioned that Mrs. Smith was believed to be the first white woman to ride to Lake Waikaremoana from Wairoa.

The claim is disputed by Mrs. Isobel Bousfield, of Kopu road, Wairoa, who enters a counter-claim on behalf of her mother, the wife of the late Major William A. Richardson. Mrs. Bousfield states that her mother rode to Waikaremoana 63 years ago, when Major Richardson had occasion to visit the outpost there of the Armed Constabulary, then maintained on the bluff at Panikeri to watch the Urewera tribes in case'of a recrudescence of the old Hauhau troubles.

“My father was stationed at Frasertown, then called Te Kopu, with'the Armed Constabulary,” writes Mrs. Bousfield. “He had to spend three months at the redoubt on the lake, and mother accompanied him. She carried me on her knee, in the saddle, and my sister and brother were carried by my father’s orderly. I have a faint recollection of the visit, and of the journey. I thought it a funny place to find such a lot of water!

“There was a heavy fall of snow while we were there, and I was carried across the parade-ground as it was too deep for me to walk through. “The late Mrs. Martin Smith hardly could have been the first woman to ride up to the lake, as she had only arrived in New Zealand about that time.”