NEVER BEEN ILL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 739, 12 August 1929, Page 14

NEVER BEEN ILL

NONAGENARIAN’S RECORD CAPTURED BY MAORIS fSpecial to THE SUN) TE AROHA, Today. Never to have had a day’s illness in his life is the proud record of Mr. R. Pentecost, of Mangateparu, Thames Valley, who celebrates his ninetieth birthday this month. Mr. Pentecost was born at Brixton, London. His father, who was a dairy farmer in a small way, decided to emigrate to Christchurch, and the family arrived in New Zealand :in 1856 after a rough trip in the Joseph Fletcher. The voyage to Auckland occupied six months.

At Lyttelton, the family left the ship and walked over the Port Hills to Christchurch, where the first night was spent in a tent pitched on the site where the cathedral now stands. Mr. Pentecost, sen., decided to take up land at Rangiora, and the trip was made from Christchurch in a bullock wagon. Mr. R. Pentecost became successful as a shearing and fencing contractor, and a few years later took up sheepfarming at Nelson. Mr. Pentecost had a thrilling experience while in Canterbury. One day he was driving a team of bullocks along an isolated road, when a party of Maoris ambushed him. Killing the animals, they marched him off as a prisoner to the native pa at Kaiapoi. There he was closely guarded. However, he attracted the notice of a young Maori girl, who released him one night, and he lost no time in reaching his home in Rangiora. Some years later he was at a stock sale near Haw era, when a stout, middle-aged Maori woman went up to him and made herself known as the woman who had helped him years previously.

After an unsuccessful attempt to win gold on the diggings, Mr. Pentecost 1 went farming at Taranaki, and later at Bay of Islands. In 1914 his wife died, and he went to his present home. He has a family of seven.