PERSONAL

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXIX, Issue 88, 9 April 1934, Page 5

PERSONAL

<s> Mr Stirling Atkins, Takapau, is at present an inmate of the Palmerston.’ North Hospital, where he jwill undergo an operation for appendicitis. In St. Mary’s Church yesterday at the Choral Eucharist, the unveiling of a memorial tablet to the memory of the late Mr Walter C. Cartwright (at one time in business in Waipukurauj took place. The Rev. Canon E. D. Rice conducted the ceremony. • Incidental to a social hold by the Eketahuna Fire Brigade, at the close of the annual meeting, the presentation of a further two years service bar, marking the completio'n of 17 years activity as a fire-fighter, was handed to secretary S. Daniel by Ex-superin-tendent Greathead. Mr Daniel took part in the recent conference and demonstration of the U.D.F.8.A., and being a fairly frequent visitor to the town as the guest of Mr and Mrs S. Pettingell, the latter being his sister, enjoys the friendship of a fairly large circle of local residents. Mr J. J. L. Burke, the new Regis-trar-General of Land,- is well-known on the West Coast, for he was born and went to school in Hokitika and Greymouth and spent twelve years in the transfer office at Hokitika before going to Wellington in 1908. He has been in Wellington ever since. Mr Burke took a prominent part in the recent celebrations of Archbishop Redwood’s episcopal diamond jubilee, and at the public reception tendered the Archbishop at the Town Hall he read the address on behalf of the New Zealand Hibernian and Australasian Catholic Benefit Society. He is a member of the Wellington Catholic Education Board, vice-president of the Marist Brothers’ Old Boys’ Association, and also vice-president of the St. Patrick’s Old Boys’ Association.

To hear the thunder of the>guns at Sebastopol; to sail the ijeven seas under the King’s ensign; to take part in the wild excitment of half a dozen gold rushes, and then to spend 70 years ’in a little lonely mining township; such is the epitome of the career of Tames Archer Crawford, who died at Naseby on Saturday a few days after his 104th birthday. One of the oldest residents of the Dominion, he has been successively sailor, miner and world wanderer. He had braved the Crimean winters, sweltered under Australian suns, had been wounded by a Russian swordsman, waylaid by a gang of bushrangers, and had missed a fortune by the barest of chances. Mr Crawford was born in 1830 in the little village of Carnoustie, near Dundee, where his father was stationmaster. He came of a family noted for the longevity of its members ,his father living to he 99 years of age, and his grandfather 105. When 13 or 14 years of age Mr Crawford was articled as an apprentice on the sailing ship William of Dundee, but he ran away and joined the navy. There followed years of life in the service of the Queen.