HER 87TH ANNIVERSARY

Taranaki Daily News, 22 August 1931, Page 6 (Supplement)

HER 87TH ANNIVERSARY

A PIONEER Or TARANAKI LIKE AT MlDiilllST VLAIiS ACO. A.\ JXGLEWOOI) LADY’S Al EM<»K lES Mrs. C. Simons, Brown Street, Ingle•wood, last Monday celebrated the <S7th ‘anniversary of her birth. Her health has not been very good for some months -past but her memory is very good and idle likes to talk of things that happened in the early days. She was born at Stoke Bruerenc, Northamptonshire, England. She ofttimes talks of her school days, and •she tells her family that her only school ■book was the Bible. She could repeat many chapters from memory- Married at Stoke Bruerene to the late Mr. C. -Simons, she sailed with him and their three children some years later for New Zealand. They were passengers by the sailing ship Mcro-pe, and after -91 days they reached Port Lyttelton on October 28, 1870. . Mr. and Mrs. Simons were farming in iCanterbury for about nine years, and -then camo to Taranaki, where they carried on farming for many years. (They bought a bush farm on Radnoi Road, Midhirst, and were there for nbout 12 years. From Midhirst they shifted to Tariki Road, where they car’" tried on dairying more extensively, milking up to 90 cows. Mr. -Simons died 22 years ago’last January, and Mrs. (Simons then moved into Inglewood, -where she has resided ever since with her daughter, Miss Mary Simons. Mrs. Simons has brought up a family of seven sons and six daughters —thiri (teen in all —of whom five sons and five daughters are still living. There are 63 grand’-children and 50 grcat-grandchild--ren now lirving. Mrs. Simons relates how they had -to tramp for miles along bush tracks in the early days. The Mountain Road -was nothing but a slush pond from beginning to end in the winter months. -It was impossible to use horses, bullocks being the only means of. transport at that time. On both sides of the Mountain Road there was standing -bush from Lepperton Junction to Nor--manby, \with many wild pigs and wild cattle roaming about the bush roads. (Sometimes the pigs would bail up people on the road. The changes of the last 50 years have (been tremendous, Mrs. Simons says. (The Mountain Road now is all sealed, the mud is all covered up, and one sees a continual stream of beautiful, pol-j-ished, glassed-in sedan motor-cais tiav(elling up and down continually. There was°no ’beautiful Ngaere Gardens, nor was there any picture theatre when she ifirst came to Taranaki. The train went from New Plymouth to Stratford only, and there was no such thing as a -butter or cheese factory in ■ rose days and no beautiful bungalows to be seen along the roads. The buildings were -made of slabs or pungae. “Now,” she added, “the people live in luxury and they travel in luxury. For that, she might have said, they ’ have to thank the first courageous men and women who braved the hardships and troubles of the pioneering days.