Obituary

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 281, 28 November 1945, Page 5

Obituary

One more of the few remaining pioneers of the Wanganui Small Farm Settlement, or Pemberton Block, passed away quietly in his sleop recently after a short illness, in the person of Robert Hancock, of Rangiwahia, aged 93. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1852, he later became a brass-finisher, following the trade of both his father and grandfather. At 19 he went to New York and worked at his trade, there getting three times the wage he earned in England. Going back to England a year later, he married and sailed for New Zealand in the Jane Douglas, which took four months for the trip. He chose New Zealand because some man, who had returned from New Zealand, said he had received 8s per day for post and rail fencing. However, nothing like that eventuated for Mr. Hancock, but many years later when he got work ou the Greatford length of the railways as a plate layer at. 6s 6d per day, he felt that fortune had smiled on him. In those days, with no export trado for mutton, sheep fetched 2s 6d and nearly all aged ewes were boiled for tallow, the residue going to bacon factories which reared their own pigs. In 1882 the first shipment of frozen mutton left New Zealand, and with the Ballance and Seddon Governments in the late SO’s, money flowed into the country and land settlement boomed. So w'ith Mr. Edwin Barrett and some 80 others, he went to a successful ballot of the Pemberton Block at Wanganui in 1888, of 8000 acres in 100 and 150 acre sections. Fifty-seven years ago, when he came to his section, a horse track 15 miles long entered the dense forest at Ivimbolton trig, and until reaching Rangiwahia, a natural clearing of 8U acres, one hardly saw* <Jaylight. To the Maori hunting pai’ties in older days who had perhaps travelled from other natural clearings near Palmerston North through a continuous forest, it seemed apt to call it Rangiwahia—• "Opening in the Heavens.” Mr. Hancock did most of the work of clearing the bush and fencing, felled many acres of bush for others, and made many a mile of new roads and tracks. He was a foundation director of the Rangiwahia Dairy Company, and a foundation trustee of the Methodist Church. In his earlier days, helped by his wife, he took his full share in every move for the progress of the district. He would recall with delight how the bird chorus of tuis, in countless numbers, would make the bush ring every morning, and of the pigeons and wild cattle that kept the settlement going in the early years. He said, quite recently, that although he missed the friends and workmates of his younger years, when he thought back on those full years, he felt very happy aud considered himself to have been very fortunate in a long, interesting ana healthy life. His wife, Mrs. Emma Hancock, predeceased him in 1916, and a grandson, Robert C. Hancock, was killed in Italy on December 15, 1943. He leaves one son, F. E. Hancock, and two grandchildren, oi Rangiwahia. He was carried to tne graveside by five sons of pioneers, Messrs. W. E. Boshier, W. Melrose, W. Carr, E. Roucher, R. D. Rose and Alan, his grandson, and the fully representative gathering showed the respect the old pioneer had obtained.