MAORI CENTENARIAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22724, 10 May 1937, Page 10

MAORI CENTENARIAN

DEATH OCCURS IN AUCKLAND

MOTHER OF 24 CHILDREN

Believed tn ho at least 105 years of age. iMrs. Neha Mere Matatuku. a member of the Xgatimaru tribe, whose home was at Thames, died yesterday at the residence of her son, Mr. Peter Grace, King's TJoad, Mount TJoskill. Mrs. Matatuku was the mother of 24 children by three husbands, her last husband, Mr. Neha Honana, dying four years ago at the age of 103. Of her 24 children, Mr. Peter Grace is the only survivor, but there are ;v large number of other descendants, including great-great-grandchildren. She was an exceptionally active woman and she usually made two or three visits a year to Auckland. She then would think nothing of walking from her home at Mount Boskill, into Queen Street. Born in the district which subsequently became Thames, she had many memories familiar among Maoris generally at the time of incidents in the Maori-European fighting in the King Country,' and one of her vivid recollections was the landing in the early days from H.M.S. Miranda of troops who built the Miranda Redoubt. Before Sir John Logan Campbell saw the Waitemata lie landed at "\\aiou, now Coromandel, where, he recorded, there ruled a "Yankee King," known to the Maoris as Waipeha. Mrs. Matatuku remembered this American sailor who had established himself among the Maoris and whose name, her descendants state, was George Thomas HutchiI son.