PASSING OF PIONEER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18786, 15 June 1929, Page 8

PASSING OF PIONEER.

MBS P. M. KEEGAN, OF AKAROA. One of Canterbury’s early pioneers passed away at Auckland on Monday in the person of Mrs P. Keegan. The late Mrs Keegan was born in the Vale of Avoca, County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1849, coming to New Zealand with other members of her family at an early age, when the Canterbury settlement was being founded. All the hardships of early settlement were experienced. She married the late Mr Patrick Martin Keegan, an East Indian veteran, who had taken up a bush section at Akaroa. Here pioneering began in ear nest. Hard work, isolation and no road, the necessities of life almost unprocurable, and farm products almost unsaleable. In spite of these drawbacks the old Akaroa pioneers were happy, and made good and reared large families. The late Mrs Keegan had a family of twelve, eight of whom survive, together with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, quite a number having settled in Auckland. Some time ago .she went to Auckland on a visit to her daughter, Mrs Hallam, of Eden Terrace.

A large number of descendents of the old Akaroa pioneers now residing in Auckland assembled at the graveside in the Waikumete Cemetery to pay a last tribute to an old settler whoso hands were never idle. So far as can be learned there aje now only two left out of all the early pioneers who had been attracted to beautiful Akaroa in the very early days, and who worked so hard to reclaim it from a state of nature.