IN DOMINION 88 YEARS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1929, Page 12

IN DOMINION 88 YEARS

99TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED. Mrs. C. G. Crosse, of Palmerston North, reached her 99th birthday on Thursday. “Well, here I am,” she remarked to a Post representative who called upon her, fi and except for having lost the sight of one eye and an occasional 'backache, I am quite fit and well.” The old lady has all her faculties and is able to walk about unaided. As a girl of 10J veal's, Mrs. Crosse came to New Zealand with her parents in the ship Lady Nugent from England, arriving on March 15, 1841. There were only about 700 in Wellington then, the remainder of the colonists who had come out under the New Zealand Land Company’s scheme having ventured into the Hutt Valley. For five weeks or sop the family lived in barracks, but finally her father built his own home in Bolton ■Street at the back of the Sydiiey Street cemetery. In January, 1853,' she was married to Mr. C. G. Crosse, who had only been in New Zealand a few months, and in the following year the newly married couple decided to take up land in Hawke’s Bay, Mrs. Crpsso was the first of the four women who went up the Tukituki River from Napier to Waipukurau. There was not even a road south out of Napier in those days, so the journey had to be made in a flat-bottomed boat which was used to take produce up the river. The journey took six days, and now can be accomplished by car or train in less than two hours.

In 1855, Mr. and Mrs. Crosse took up land at Porangahau before any other settlers. Sir George Hunter’s family arrived ten months later, so that Air. Crosse could be designated the father of Porangahau. They lived for nineteen years on the station sheep-farm-ing, and the conditions under which Mrs. Crosse lived and brought up her family of sturdy sons and daughters would strike terror into the modern young wife.

“I saw some very hard times,” Mrs. Crosse stated. “I saw ten long years in Porangahau before I first got out of it, without a nurse or anything in the nature of help. It was a very long and dreary time. My nearest neighbour was seven miles away, except for the Maoris, and we owed a great deal to them for their kindnesses. I thought nothing of being four or five months without seeing a white woman, and then it was just as people passed along the track to and from Napier. ■Once a man who called and demanded a bed for the night threatened to shoot me when I refused.”

The wool from the station. Mrs. Crosse said, was taken by bullock waggon to Blackhead, 14 miles away on the coast, and there shipped.

In 1871 Mr. Crosse died as a result of being thrown from a horse, and in 1873 Mrs. Crosse took up her residence in Napier on account of her children needing better education than could be given them on the farm, two sons being left in charge. From then on to the present day Airs. Crosse has lived in several towns. The last ten years have been spent in Palmerston North. Mi’s. Crosse’has been the mother of nine children, eight of whom are still alive. There are also fifteen granddaughters, fifteen grand-sons and fortysix great grand-children. Yesterday Mrs. Crosse received a large number of congratulatory telegrams, letters, and messages. During the afternoon the Mayor and 'Mayoress (Mr. and Mrs. A. J. G’raham) called upon Mrs. Crosse to extend their congratulations.