MEMORY OF GATE PA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 4

MEMORY OF GATE PA

A WELL-KNOWN FAMILY HISTORY RECALLED (From Oob own Correspondent.) LONDON, September 7. An interesting old lady, 85 years of age, who was a girl in her teens at the time of Gate Pa, in 1864, and who is the only one of her generation in her family who can remember anything definite of the Maori war, has written to the High Commissioner asking the exact date of the attack on the Gate Pa, and for the title of any books relating the history of that period in New Zealand. Her brother and sister were very muoh younger than herself, and only know of the events as told to them. The lady is Miss L. G. Dean-Pitt, whose grandfather. Major-general George Dean-Pitt, was general commanding her Majesty’s forces in New Zealand from 1847 to 1851, and was also LieutenantGovernor of the Northern Province. Her father was his A.D.C., and wa« with the general in the Waikato _ Country, while two elder brothers had joined the local forces with their respective detachment camps on the Great South road. At this time Mrs Dean-Pitt,-with her family, lived in Auckland, and Sir George Grey Used to send the latest news to her from Tauranga. To the memory'of General Dean-Pitt, who died in 1857, there is a tablet in St. Paul’s Church, Auckland. In that year the family returned to England. Miss Dean-Pitt's father became an instructor at the School of Musketry at Hythe, a position which he held for three years, until he was sent to Melbourne as instructor of musketry in the Australian colonies, which then meant Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and some smaller islands off the coast. Melbourne was the headquarters of H.M. troops, her father making an annual visit to the other colonies. At the close of the Maori war of 1860-61, General Cameron, being then in command, the headquarters were moved from Melbourne to Auckland, and the family went there in 1862, returning to Melbourne in 1867. Miss Dean-Pitt further mentioned. that after Australia the family were at the Cape of Good Hope for most of the seventies, her father being chief of the staff. Later he held command of the depot at Guildford, and finally he was appointed to the Tower, of London, as Keeper of the Crown Jewels. It was there that he died in ,1883. The High Commissioner was greatly interested to receive this information from Miss Dean-Pitt, in her own handwriting. He recommended Main’s “ The Waikato War,” and offered to lend her Cowane “ New Zealand Wars in the Pioneering Period.”