PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9614, 12 September 1894, Page 6

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Mrs. Yates, the Mayor of Onehunga, returned from her Southern tour by the s.s. Talune yesterday morning. Mr. Samuel Prout, a veteran bandmaster, of Ballarat, died recently. Over 30 years ago, it is stated, the deceased brought the fir/>t private band into Victoria. Sir J. B. Lawes, well known in the Mackay (Queensland) district, where he was engaged in sugar-planting, has been made a D.Sc. at Cambridge, in acknowledgment of his great service to agriculture. Mr. Charles Mills, who died in Brisbane the other day, was for nearly 22 years printer and publisher of the Brisbane Telegraph. For 31 years he lived in Brisbane. Mr. Mills was born on August 18, 1834, at Longford, County Longford, Ireland. In the year 1850 the whole family, consisting of father, mother, four sons, and two daughters, immigrated to Australia in the ship Areyle. The eldest son, Mr. Robert Mills, landed at Melbourne, but the rest of the family went on to Sydney, the ship arriving at that port on September 17, 1850. Charles, then sixteen years of age, was apprenticed to Mr. A IbertMason, printer, in Castlereagh-street. When the Telegraph was projected, Mr. Mills was chosen as the printer and pub lisher. The Telegraph, which started on October 1, 1872, as a daily, was a four-page pa|>er each page containing six columns, and for several years Mr. Mills and about a dozen men were able to produce the paper. In 1875, owing to the increase in the size of the daily paper and the issue of a weekly, and the consequent increase in the staff of employees, Mr. Mills sold his printing business, and devoted all his energies to the papers, of the mechanical departments of which he was.in charge. He leaves a widow and seven children, between the ages of 4 and 17.