TWO EARLY COLONISTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19916, 9 April 1928, Page 11

TWO EARLY COLONISTS.

NINETY YEARS OF AGE. A TRAVELLER'S REMINISCENCES. MARRIED SIXTY-THREE YEARS.

Here and there in New Zealand someone attains the ripe age of 90 years in full enjoyment of his or her faculties, but the occasions must be rare ori which both husband and wife have passed the "allotted span" by 20 years. Such a record is found in the case of Mr. and Mrs. T. G. Marlow, of 15, Wilding Avenue, Epsom. To be quite exact, Mr. Marlow will not have completed his 90th year until June next, for he was born on June 27, 1838; but Mrs. Marlow passed her 90th birthday on November 19 last, for she was born in 1837, the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne. Both are true Londoners, "born within the sound of Bow bells." "But I don't know where," added Mrs. Marlow, laughing.

Mr. Marlow was apprenticed to a London draper and it was not until 1864, when he was 26, that he went out to seek his fortune in the colonies. He went to Melbourne that year in the sailing vessel Winifred which, after leaving Port Philip dh the return journey, was never heard of again. Dunedin in 1865. The following year he came in the Hero to Dunedin, and in those days there was not a mile of railway or a yard of tele* graph line in New Zealand. That year Mrs. Marlow was about to take a passage in the ill-fated London, but instead went to Melbourne in the Sussex and on to Dunedin in the Alhambra. In 1865 they were married by the Rev. Dr. Stuart in the house of Air. Samuel Biss, who was afterwards for many years postmaster in Auckland. Mr. and Mrs. Marlow remained in Dunedin until early in the eighties and saw the city in the making. Princes Street, when they first knew it, was just a cutting through Bell Hill. They saw the building of First Church, the laying out of the Octagon and the erection of the Town Hall. Among their neighbours in London Street was the Rev. Dr. Burns, the pioneer minister of the Otago settlement, and at that time Sir Robert Stout was an assistant school teacher i'or whom a distinguished career was already being predicted by those who had noted his abilities. Sir James Mills, the managing director of the Union Steam Ship Company, was a boy in the shipping office of "Johnny" Jones. The founders of the firm of Hudson and Company had a little bakery and tho founders of Messrs. A. and T. Burt were conducting a small tinsmith's shop at a street corner. Traveller for Well-known Firm. Mr. Marlow's first position in Dunedin was with the drapery firm of Herbert, Haynes, but later he joined Messrs. Ross and Glendining, with whom he continued until they went into the wholesale business. He left them to become a traveller for Bing, Harris and Company and as their representative he used to travel from Auckland to the Bluff. His work took him up the East Coast to Auckland and back.by the West Coast as far as Hokilika. In 1881 Mr. Marlow came to Auckland to join the firm of Archibald Clark and after being some years employed in their warehouse took up travelling again. In the course of his long experience on the road Mr. Marlow claims thai there is not a town in New Zealand that he has not visited, and many that were the merest villages when he knew them now boast all the dignity of mayors and town councils. A Turn at Farming. Comparatively late in life, although it is a long time ago, Mr. Marlow took up farming aud„for 10 years, with his sons, worked a holdiug of 1000 acres at Katikati. i'ollowing that he spent 20 years on tho clerical staff of the Waihi Gold Mining Company at Waikino. It is only seven or eight years since he decided to retire, so that he continued in harness until he was well past 80 years of ago. He is willing to agree now that he lias really "earned a bit of a spell." It is not to be denied that physically tho weight of years is making itself felt with Mr. Marlow. Ho get about so actively now, but otherwise he retains all his faculties unimpaired. Mrs. Marlow, who is a few months his senior, is wonderfully active, and shows an alertness and shrewd sense of, humour that might be envied by anyone half her age. Mr. and Mrs. Marlow have a family of six sons and two daughters alive. There are eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren.