MARRIED FIFTY YEARS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1929, Page 3

MARRIED FIFTY YEARS

TARANAKI PIONEERS CELEBRATE MR. AND MRS. G. TAYLOR', HAWERA The fiftieth anniversary of their wedding was celebrated 'by Mr. and Mrs. George Taylor, Belmont, Argyle Street, Hawera, at the Savoy on Thursday afternoon. The wedding cake had a golden rim and .the decorations were all gilded. . Married in Aberdeen on July 18, 1879, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, then 24 and 22 years old, left five weeks later in the Aretliusa for the bushy wastes of New Zealand. At Wanganui on December 9 they were met with a buggy and taken, to Waverley by Mr. J. B. ■ Taylor, who had settled there six years before. In 1884 Mr. and Mrs. Taylor left for Otakeho and Kapuni, between which places, on the Mangawhero Road he had bought a farm. For six years he managed a farm for Mr. G. S. Bridge. Then he went on to his own place, 200 acres of standing bush. The purchase price was £1 19s per acre, but Mr. Taylor bought it after a year or two at a reduced figure.

Mr. Taylor obtained permission to cut a four-feet pack track through the bush to give entrance from what is now Rama Road, and later to the front from the Rowan Road. He cleared a little bush and packed timber in from a mill on. the Manaia Road. With a friend Mr. Taylor built the four-roomed house that was to be the home of himself and his wife and young family for a number of years. Mrs. Taylor had remained at Waverley while Mr. Taylor was making the home. There was in 1885 no railway line past Manutahi, and the family came to that point by rail and then were brought by a friend in a buggy to a farmhouse near the Waingongoro, where Mr. Taylor met them and the journey was continued by waggon. So rough was the trip that he carried the baby in his arms, and it was difficult for them to keep their places on the rough vehicle over the arduous journey. The couple settled on the bush farm and there they brought up a family of 12, They remained on the farm until 19'05, when they leased it and moved to Boyd’s house on the South Road, remaining there for 14 years, and in. 1919 settling in their present home. The family consisted of six boys and six girls, but of the boys, one,- Leonard Murray, was killed at the front. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor a year or two ago traversed the battlefields.

The girls are Mesdames R. T. Bullock (Hawera), Tom Tait (Hawera), B. Woodward (Gisborne), W. F. Lyndon (Auroa), Peacock and Ward (Tokaora), and the sons, George (Auckland), Willie (Ruawai), Herbert (Cairo), Hector (Tokaora), Douglas (Waitotara). There are 27 grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren. At the wedding the bridesmaid was Miss Eunice Kane, now Mrs. Carnegie, living in Dunedin