103 YEARS OLD

Taranaki Daily News, 2 August 1932, Page 7

103 YEARS OLD

RESIDENT OF SOUTH OTAGO. MR. JOSIAH KEYS’ CAREER. Varied and at times adventurous experiences have fallen to the lot of Mr. Josiah Keys, of Toiro, South Otago, who, according to a Press Association telegram from Dunedin, celebrated his 103rd birthday on Saturday. Mr. Keys received a visit from the Mayor of Balclutha ou Saturday, and congratulatory messages were sent to him from all parts of New Zealand. The son of a farmer, Mr. Keys was born in Donemana, County Tyrone, Ireland, on Ji;ly 30, 1829, and has therefore lived through great historical events about which many people have only read. Although the political, social and economic structure of Great Britain had undergone a revolution between 1780 and 1830, it was in 1832, when Mr. Keys was three years eld, that the principal phase of the struggle for Parliamentry electoral reform was over and the Reform Act triumphantly passed. . . Five Sovereigns have reigned in Britain in Mr. Keys’ lifetime. King George IV. was on the Throne at the time Mr. Keys was born, although he died the following year. Then came the short reign of William IV., who was followed by Queen Victoria in 1837. Mr. Keys was'then a boy of eight years, and it is said that he remembers being taken to Londonderry to hear a ballad sung on the occasion of the Queen’s accession. King Edward VII. and King George V. complete the list of five monAs a lad, Mr. Keys was sent to a church school, but his education was chiefly attended to at home by his father, who was a strict Presbyterian. Mr. Keyes remembers that it was his task to read 10 chapters of the Bible every week-day and 20 on Sundays. He also remembers the great potato “rot”, of 1846 in Ireland, and the dreadful famine that followed in its wake. In 1847 he left Ireland for America, sailing on the clipper ship Montezuma. From New York he went by rail to Philadelphia to join his uncle, and commenced to work as an apprentice to the engineering trade. In time he became foreman of a machine shop and remained in Philadelphia until ISC>2. Receiving an offer to go to Cuba to fit up machinery, he accepted it for health reasons. Later, he took up a position as superintendent of the sugar-boiling operations and engineer on the Santa Fe plantation. For six years he held this position and then went home to Ireland for a holiday. Returning to Cuba, he found the island in a state of civil war and had some interesting encounters with insurgents. He. left Cuba and arrived in London in June, 1870, and two years later returned to Londonderry to work for the Irish North-Western Railway Company. Later he purchased 35 acres of land at Donemana and lived there for eight years. In 1880 he arrived in New Zealand to join his son, William Keys, since deceased. He commenced to search for land in Southland, but eventually settled at Toiro, in the Clutlia district. After his wife’s death he removed to Balclutha, where he became a familiar figure on the bowling green. After some years he returned to Toiro. He has always been firm in his observance of the Sabbath and apears on Sundays in black broad-cloth and