FORMER FEILDING RESIDENTS CELEBRATE GOLDEN WEDDING

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 97, 27 April 1939, Page 11

FORMER FEILDING RESIDENTS CELEBRATE GOLDEN WEDDING

Rev. and Mrs. Curran LIFE OF DEVOTION TO SERVICE Two of the most familiar of European personalities in South Taranaki among the native race, Rev. H. and Mrs Curran, of Camberwell Road, Hawera, and formerly of Feilding, celebrated tho 50th anniversary of their wedding on April 10. The celebration occasioned a family gathering, attended by their son, Mr S. W. Curran, of Palmerston North, and Mrs Curran, and their four daughters, Mrs T. W. Reid, of Marton, and Mr Reid, Mrs W. F. Eade, of Hawera, and Mr Eade, Mrs R. Palmer, of Marton, and Mr Calmer and Mrs I. C. Funmell, of Feilding, and Mr Funnell. Other present included three granddaughters, eight of their 11 grandsons and close friends, including Mr and Mrs M. It. Jones, of Hawera. Many congratulations and messages of goodwill were received, including one from tho Mayor of Hawera (Mr J. E. Campbell) on behalf of Hawera citizens.

Married at Makino, Feilding, on April 10, ISB9, Mr and Mrs Curran have shared a full life in many parts of the Dominion, pioneering many districts and overcoming together the tremendous handicaps to be experienced in a young and raw colony. To-day they are surrounded by their family and friends and can look back on a life of service devoted to the betterment of the lives of man of all creeds and two races, physically, spiritually and morally. Particularly among the Maoris of South Taranaki will they be remembered, for it is here that they have spent the last 19 years of their life. Mr Curran labouring both as minister and health adviser to the native race.

The inquiring layman would bo astonished at the variety of experience which has gone into the making of those 50 eventful years. Tho span is half a century, yet Mr Curran declares that the days were, and are still, too short. For his inability to alter this state of affairs, he has compensated by living fully each day after the pattern of “filling the unforgiving minute,” and has a story to relate that would be almost incredible were it not emphatically true. Both he and Mrs Curran have witnessed the growth of the colony to maturity and the development into “civilised” parts of the country many areas where roads wero mud, bridges were unheard of and the sly-grog seller was also the district con stable.

Mrs Curran has accompanied her husband to all the stations he has attended since their marriage, making tho best of the most primitive arrangements for domestic labour.

Mr Curran has been preaching for the past 56 years, starting as a local preacher round the Feilding, Manawatu and Rangitikei districts, being first associated with tho Primitive Methodist Church. In 1893 he resigned his work as a preacher with a guaranteed salary, holding the psalmist’s faith “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” before him as his guiding light since that time. Since then he has not belonged to any denomination. Ho would have liked to have become a foreign missionary, but that way was not opened to him.

When he entered fully into his work, Mr Curran and his wife began the association with the Main Trunk railway district near Hunterville which was to provide them with so many vivid memories and much real danger. From there Mr Curran started the evangelistic work that was to take him from Stewart Island to 255 miles north of Auckland and to Australia and provide this chapter of his life with words written in indelible ink.

It was while he was working among the European communities that his eyes were opened to tho tremendous need among the native race for medical missionary work and he concentrated most of his energies in this direction, 42 years of his life being spent in devoted service to the native race, both as a spiritual guide and medical missionary. For 10 years he lived at

Hastings doing principally Maori work and he went to Waikaremoana, to become the first missionary to be stationed in that district. From there he went to Feilding, where he spent 12 years working in the district. For the last 19 years Mr and Mrs Curran have resided in Hawera, 17 years of this perie4 being spent in working among the native race. During practically the whole of his activities Mr Curran has been associated with tho native race as a medical missionary and it is in this direction that his name is well known in many of the bye-ways of the Dominion. The relation of the varied experiences encountered during his lifetime shows that life in the young days of colonisation was no sinecure, and indeed was fought with perils, but Mr Curran expressed no regrets. He is living up to his own vow made when a young man, to “wear out, not rust out.”

It is interesting tto note that Mrs Curran’s father, Mr Andrew Green, of Cinder Hill, Feilding, is still enjoying excellent health despite his age.