MR. R.H. MEDLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 105, 31 October 1933, Page 11

MR. R.H. MEDLAND

The death occurred yesterday in his ninetieth year of Mr. Robert Henry Medland. Mr. Medland, whose parents eamo. to New Zealand in the Amelia Thompson and landed at New Plymouth in 1841, was born in 1844. At an early age he was apprenticed to the "Taranaki News," and was later overseer of the "Taranaki Herald" for eight and a half years, after which he came'to Wellington to enter the Government Printing Office. He retired in 1909, after thirty-Jive years' service with the office. Tho late Mr, Medland took part in the Maori wars. When' only sixteen years of age he joined tho Taranaki Rifle Volunteers, in which he served for five years. He went'with the expedition to recover the bodies after the Whitecliffe ' massacres in February, 1869. This was the occasion on which a party of Waikato Natives came down to the Taranaki district and massacred the Rev. Mr. Whitelcy, two military settlers, Messrs.. Milne and Richards, and Lieutenant Gascoigne, his wife, and three children. The blockhouse and the whares had been burned down, and the Natives had disappeared when the expedition arrived. Mr. Medland was for a time a vestryman of St. Paul's Church. Bowling was his main recreation, and he was a prominent member of the Thorndon Bowling Club., In his eighty-second year he was a member of the winning voterans'

rink.