CENTENNIAL ROLL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23708, 15 July 1940, Page 8

CENTENNIAL ROLL

AUCKLAND PIONEERS ROMANCE OF OLD, NAMES A VARIED PROCESSION No one who has delved at all into local history will fail to find a great deal of interest in the Early Settlers' Roll, which has just been" published by the Auckland Provincial Centennial Council. It is a list of names—more than 5000 of them —-with dates and names of ships and localities attached. A bare catalogue, certainly, but a reminder of infinite toil, endurance and enterprise that helped to make. the New Zealand of to-day. In the book a varied procession of old-time .figures passes before the reader's eyes—administrators, missionaries, soldiers, sea captains, surveyors, traders, artisans, labourers, their brave womenfolk and the children who voyaged with them to New Zealand or were born to the lot of the colonial pioneer. The record makes no distinction of rank or social status. The order of names is alphabetical, and the first Governor, Captain Hobson," has no more space allotted to him than the humblest beachcomber. . .

Early Pakeha-Maoris

Even without trenching on the ground that is being covered by the new Dictionary of National Biography, almost endless annotation of the list would be possible, for behind hundreds of the entries lie stories, of adventure that have already been set down in books and old newspaper files. * The tale begins ygrery early with , the stray adventurers who found their way to New Zealand in whalers and Sydney trading brigs, soon after the last-cen-tury opened. Living among the Maoris, numbers of such men died violent deaths or otherwise disappeared without trace. A few of them, however, appear in the roll. Such are the pakehaMaori "Jacky" Marnicn, who landed I at Hokianga in 1809 and died in 1880 at"the ripe age of 98, and one, Thomas Maxwell, who has been proved without doubt to have been living at Maraetai in 1817,; Even at that time there were settlers of a more substantial sort, for entries record the arrival at Mangonui in 1811 of the Wrathall family, who landed from the vessel Mary Ann and estabi lished themselves as farmers and traders. Marsden's Missionaries Next come the John King, William Hall and Thomafe Kendall. whom Samuel Marsden established in 1814 at Oihi, in the Bay of Islands, and with them is Captain Thomas Hansen, master of Marsden's brig, the Active, whose descendants in New Zealand have reached the ninth generation. In the list are later missionaries, such as James Kemp, who in 1819 built a house which still stands at Kerikeri; Samuel Leigh and the other .Wesleyan pioneers, who established themselves at Kaeo in 1823; and Henry Williams, who founded the Paihia station in 1523.

As might be expected, the roll contains a full record of the immigrants who reached Auckland in the 'forties in such ships as the Duchess of Argyle, Jane Gifford, Bombay, Sir George Seymour. Bellena, Westminster and Louisa Campbell. The tally ends with the close of 1852, much as the compilers would, have wished to carry it further. «