PERSONAL.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10758, 4 May 1911, Page 4

PERSONAL.

A Dunedin message records the death of Mr .John Richard Jones, a director of the Union Company, and a son of one of Otago's earliest and most prominent settlers..- • •- : 'jfjlio Eltham correspondent of the Hawera S.tar states that .the Hou. J. Mackenzie is to be asked to contest the Egrnojit seat at the general election. Messrs Dive and Wake have already stated that they will be candidates. •Tlic death is recorded from .Wellington, of Mr E. J. Riddiford, New Zealand's richest inhabitant, . very well known in Wellington for many years. The deceased I was a soii of the late Mr Daniel Riddiford, who arrived in Wellington in 1841 by the Adelaide, one of the first of the New Zealand Land Company's chartered ships (which brought put in sections the first European house erected at Thorndon, near Pipitea Point). It was the mother of deceased who was employed to write the"first dispatches of! the New Zealand Land Company, for the edification of people in England interested in the scheme of colonisation. Mr E. J. Riddiford was born at the Lower Hutt in 1842, audi was the first child baptised by Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand. He was educated first in Wellington, and subsequently at Morison's Scotch College, at Melbourne: Brought up to farming pursuits, he lias never deserted his calling. He owned, the big Te Awaite estate of between 50,000 and 60,000 acres on the East Coast (one of the finest, deer forests in the world), the Orongoronga estate (which includes 640 acres of freehold and 7000 acres of leasehold land), and ahout 200 acres in the Hutt Valley, including the ten acres surrounding his beautiful residence at the Lower Hutt. Mr Riddiford has been too much engrossed in agricultural and pastoral pursuits to devote much time to public affairs, hut lie was at one time a. member of the Wairarapa County Council and other district bodies, and in the early days of unrest he served as a lieutenant in the militia under Colonel Gorton. Ho was at one time a vice-president of the Wellington Agricultural and Pastoral Association. In 1879 he married a daughter of the .late Mr Henry Bunny, of the Hutt, ai sister of Mr E. P. Bunny, the present Mayor ,of the Low"er Hutt. The deceased leaves three sons, Messrs E. J. Riddiford', R. Riddiford, and D. Riddiford, and three daughters.