HISTORIC DOCUMENT

Wairarapa Daily Times, 7 December 1937, Page 6

HISTORIC DOCUMENT

PRESENTED TO SCHOOL. In recognition of the recent jubilee of the Martinborough District High School, Mr. Eric Eamsden, a former pup'il, and author of the much discussed “Marsden and the Missions: Prelude to Waitangi,” has presented an original Marsden document to the school. The manuscript is portion of a holograph sermon written by the Bev. Samuel Marsden, pioneer missionary in New Zealand, more than a century ago. It was probably written about 1830 as the watermark is of that year. It is typical of the bold, unformed, characteristic writing of Marsden before the final phase of partial blindness set in. He died at Windsor, New South Wales, on May 12, 1935, and commemorative services are to be held in Australia next year to mark that event.

Examples of Marsden’s handwriting, apart from the collection of MSS in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, are by no means general in New Zealand? The bulk of the Marsden material is in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, where Mr. Batnsden did his research for his book. This example will be framed and kept at the High School as a link with the pioneer missionary. Mr. Eamsden, who is . a member of the Royal Australian Historical Soci*3& has been invited to deliver the Marsden , oration in Sydney on the occasion of the centenary of the famous missionary’s death in 1938.