DEATH OF AN OLD COLONIST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13194, 4 June 1906, Page 4

DEATH OF AN OLD COLONIST.

One of the second generation of "old missionaries," Mr. William P. Kemp, died at his residence, Waimate North, on Monday last. He was the third son of Mr. James Kemp, one of the band of missionaries sent.to this country (it was not a, colony then) by the Church Missionary Society in the early part of the last century. 'Hie Rev. Samuel Mursden, on his second visit to New Zealand, in 1819,. brought with him the Rev. I. Butler and Mr. Kemp, and they founded the mission settlement of Kerikeri. Mr. Kemp was bom at Kerikeri in the year 1829, and was therefore nearly 77 years of age at the time of his death. His brothers—Mr. Jas. Kemp, of Kerikeri, and Mr. H. T. Kemp-— as well as his four sisters, had all died before him. Mr. Kemp's long life has been of a quiet and unostentatious diameter, and attracted but little attention from the outside world; but in. his own. neighbourhood and in his own quiet way he did a work that will always keep his memory green. For a time he was clerk of the R.M. Court, and- he was a licensed interpreter up to the time of his death. Strict in keeping to the habits of social and religious life brought to this young country by the fathers frojin the old,* wellordered homes beyond the sea, he was at the same time blessed with a genial temperament that made his company pleasant to all who knew him. When his brother, Mr. Jas. Kemp, died, after the many years of faithful service as lay reader in the little church at Kerikeri, Mr. Wni. Kemp took up the work and continued to go from his home at Waimate to conduct the services on the Sundays when Archdeacon Walsh was not present, his last service being only eighteen days before his death. The funeral look place at the historic churchyard at Waimate North on Wednesday, May 30, and was conducted by the -Iter. J. Kcrelene, in the absence of Archdeacon. Walsh. The service was part in English and part in Maori, and the large number of neighbours present on an extremely wet and boisterous day was a testimony to the respect in which the deceased was held.