MR JOSEPH SMITH PASSES

Northern Advocate, 2 December 1936, Page 6

MR JOSEPH SMITH PASSES

AGED PIONEER OF NORTHLAND

The death occurred to-day at his residence, Grant Street. Kamo, of Mr. Joseph Smith, in his 94th Mr. Smith was born in 1843. in the village of Broad Clist, near Exeter. As a boy he was fired with an ambition to come to the colonies. By the fruits of his own careful savings he was able to beard the emigrant ship Hanover, which left England on May ;19, 18G2. The boat arrived at Auckland on September 10, and Mr. Smith s first job was taking bread in a wheelbarrow over tea-tree tracks to sawyers’ huts in Ponsonby. For this he received a shilling a day. and a week of it sufficed.

Seeing an advertisement in a newspaper, Mr. Smith was quick to seize a chance for better things, and in this manner secured a position with Mr. Tom Henry, at that time one of the largest landholders in the Northland. For some time he worked on the Bellevue estate, Ruakaka. and the Tara estate, Mangawai. He remembered Bishop Selwyn stopping at Bellevue on his way to open Christ Church at Whangarei. Sir George Grey was a fairly frequent visitor to the estate. Joined Gold Rush. When the gold rush broke out Mr. Smith joined in the stampede to the Thames, where he pegged a claim in Madman’s Gully, up the Monataki. The attempt to “get rich quick” ended in disappointment. After two luckless years at Thames Mr. Smith returned to the Whangarei district to engage in digging of a different kind—this time for gum at Rowdytown, Ruatangata. The site of Mr. Phil Going’s present farm was the scehe of quite a village, which apparently was very a£tly named. “It was a great place for waipiro,” said Mr. Smith. “Among the eighty ' diggers most nationalities and conditions of men were represented. We even had a Chinaman.”

The bare living which could be made from gum did not appeal to a man whose chief ambition was to own his own piece of land. He worked on Mr. Street’s farm, Ruatangata, for a short time and then took a posPdon with Mr. Edouarde Cafler, in Whangarei. Mr. Cafler’s house still stands, a shingleroofed antiquity between the Harbour Board office and the Timber Company’s yards. Mr. Cafler’s property extended right to Central Park. His stockyard was located where the Bank of New Zealand now stands, and what is now the principal business centre of the town was a ten-acre sheep paddock. Property at Ruatangata.

On August 4, 1874, Mr. Smith married Miss Manning, also from Devonshire, who had been residing in Whangarei, and shortly afterwards bought a farm of his own at Ruatangata. Mr. Smith was very proud of the fact that he paid off the purchase price within a short time, despite the fact that butter. practically the only produce, sold for fivepence a pound after being packed on horseback to Whangarei. All the way the “road,” a chain-wide track, not even stumped, led through the virgin bush. Mr Smith sold his farm in 1919 to*retire to a homq in Kajpo. Mrs. Smith died 32 years ago. All the seven children of the marriage were born at Ruatangata. Those who survive are; Miss O. Smith, Kamo; Miss Jessie Smith, Los Angeles; Mrs. M. Fitze, 15 First Avenue, Kingsland; Messrs. Fred Smith, Houto; Barton Smith, Hastings; and Stanley Smith, 'Coatsville.

Even after passing the 90’s, Mr. Smith was wonderfully active, chopping wood and attending to his garden. Until a few Sundays ago he was a regular attendee at early morning service at the Kamo Anglican Church.

The funeral will leave the home, Grant Street, at 2 p.m. on Friday for Ketenikau Cemetery.