A LINK WITH THE PAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21387, 15 July 1931, Page 8

A LINK WITH THE PAST

SIR JOHN RICHARDSON’S PAPERS A VALUABLE COLLECTION Through the generosity of Mrs Herbert Macandrew the Otago Early Settlers’ Association has now in its possession a large collection of particularly valuable papers, consisting of documents, diaries, and letters, the property of the late Sir John Larkins Cheese Richardson, better known to old identities as Major Richardson, and also of the late Mr George Richardson. The oldest papers in the collection, which were shown to an Otago Daily Times representative yesterday by the chairman of the Library Committee (Mr R. H. Steel), are dated 1797, and were originally the property of Sir John Richardson’s father. In this section of the collection is an indenture with the East India Company, a very wordy document, printed on a largo sheet of paper. A pecularity of this document, in common with other documents of a similar nature drawn up in those days, was that no signatures were ever affixed. Two copies of the agreement were printed on one large sheet of paper, and when the details of the agreement were filled in in duplicate, the copies were separated by cutting the paper irregularly, leaving jagged edges. When the agreement was carried out, proof of its validity was arrived at by placing the two cut edges together to ascertain whether they corresponded or not. It is suggested that this method was used instead of the present day custom of affixing signatures to indentures on account of the fact that so many people in those days were unable to write.

Included in the collection are the estate papers and legal documents belonging to Sir John Richardson’s grandmother, and also the papers of Robert Richardson, a civil servant of the East India Company. The latter show the trading accounts, pay dockets, and regimental accounts of the Regiment of Guides. Sir John Richardson’s papers give in great detail accounts relating to his school days, his military career being perpetuated by means of despatches, wound certificates, and voluminous correspondence. Amongst the large numbers of documents of great interest are letters from various governors of the colony, including Sir George Grey, Sir George Bowen, Colonel Bruce (Governor of Australia), and others, whilst letters relating to the Provincial Council of Otago include correspondence from E. B. Cargill, John Hyde Harris, Thomas Dick, Julius Vogel, and Donald Reid.

The foundation of the University of Otago is recapitulated in letters from Dr Thomas Burns, D. M. Stuart, John Auld (who chose the first professors in Edinburgh), Professor G. S. Sale, and others. Amongst the private letters in a collection of correspondence running into numbers in excess of 7000 are communications from Gabriel Read, who discovered the great goldfield subsequently known as Gabriel’s Gully, Te Rauparaha, the notorious Maori chief, C. H. Street, Robert Gillies, and Alfred Domett. The late George Richardson went to Fiji’ as a sugar planter about 1870, and about the same time the planters petitioned the Home Office for permission to allow them to recruit native labour. Included in this collection of documents is the petition and the Home Secretary’s reply, a voluminous manuscript in book form.

Tiie whole collection, of which an adequate description could only be given in a long series of articles, is a particularly valuable and interesting one, and forms a highly-prized addition to the links with the past already possessed by the Early Settlers’ Association.