KIDNAPPED 22 YEARS AGO.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 196, 19 August 1912, Page 3

KIDNAPPED 22 YEARS AGO.

AN AUCKLANDER'S ROMANTIC, STORY.

Kidnapped 22. years ago by his grandmother from a suburb or Auckland; New Zealand, Christopher Daniel Saundorson, known as Chris Ward, an employee of the United Railroads in San Francisco, a youth who has been living for. some time past in Oakland, was recently identified through the efforts of Thomas Westoby, 717 Sycamore Street, Oakland, and is now returning to his mother, Mrs Charlotte Saunderson, who still lives near Auckland. _ According to the story told by Westoby, the lad was kidnapped by his grandmother when about two years old and .brought to California, where his father, Charles Saunderson, known as Charles Ward, was living. Saunderson senior is now dead. In 1906 Westoby became acquainted with Saunderson and his grandmother, who has since died, after the great earthquake, and fire in San Francisco, where the pair were living at the time. Saunderson has also discovered that he has a brother living in Auckland. The cause of the kidnapping is said to have been due to a quarrel between the parents. Saunderson. who arrived in Wellington on Thursday by the Manuka from San Francisco,, told a Dominion reporter that just before the earthquake, when he was doing work in connection with the post office, his friends almost got into communication with him; but about that time he took up work elsewhere, and they once more lost all trace of him, and thought that he might have lost his life "in the great disaster. Subsequently, however, an advertisement in the Auckland Star, asking for information as to his whereabouts, was brought.under the notice of Westoby, and sooi after that he pot into cojti-TnrtrM.cfit-on with his poop'o in Au:kland.