PERSONAL

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1932, Page 4

PERSONAL

Mr. and Mrs. F. «. Richards, Bell Block, have returned from England after an absence of a year.

Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Nolan will leave New Plymouth by motor this morning for Wellington, where they will meet Miss Nolan, who will arrive by the Mataroa. to-morrow after four years’ stay in England.

A very old and much-respected resident of Auckland, Mr. C. H. Olive, died at Onehunga on Friday in his 93rd year. Mr. Olive was born at Exeter in 1840 and at 13 years of age he went to soa as a ship’s carpenter apprentice, and ran the blockade four times in the American Civil War as carpenter on board the Queen of the South, a sistership to the famous Alabama. In 1864 Mr. Olive heard rumours of the discovery of gold in New Zealand, and sailed for Auckland in the ship Lizzie H. Jackson. He worked as a carpenter, and when war broke out in the Waikato he served for a period in the commissariat department. On the opening of the Thames goldfield he helped to erect the first frame building there, and also tried his luck as a digger. In 186“ he went to England to visit his parents, and on. the return voyage he had as a fellow-passenger an Irish lad of 14 named William Massey, destined to become an Empire statesman and Prime Minister of New Zealand. Mr. Olive married in 1870, at All Saints’ Church, ■Ponson’by, Miss Charlotte Fox. He spent five more years at Thames, and a year on harbour works at Lyttelton, and then settled in Auckland as a builder, an occupation which he followed for the rest of his working life. Mrs. Olive died in 1920, shortly after she and her husband had celebrated their golden wedding. A devout member of the Anglican Church, Mr. Olive was for long a pillar of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and was one of the founders of the Anglican City Mission, now controlled by the Rev. Jasper Calder. Until about six months ago he was a regular attendant at the services and social gatherings held by the mission. He is survived by one son.