DEATH OF AN EARLY SETTLER.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1867, 17 February 1880, Page 3

DEATH OF AN EARLY SETTLER.

By the sudden death of Mr George Hampleman on Friday last, at Akaros, New Zealand loses one of her very earliest settlers. Mr Hampleman was born near Hamburg in 1799, and was consequently in his eighty-first year. He came to New Zealand on a whaling cruise from Sydney in 1835, and finally settled in Psraki in 1836, being the first white resident on Banks’ Peninsula. Shortly afterwards ho purchased from the Natives a block of land on the Peninsula fifteen miles square for a small cutter and some blankets. This transaction gave rise to the celebrated Hampleman land claims which have been before successive Commissioners and Governments up to the present day. In fact, the deceased was preparing to state his claims before the Native Commissioners, who are expected to sit shortly in Akaroa. During the latter years of his life ho devoted all his energies to the prosecution of his land claims, and was by this means reduced to comparative want. The deceased was a keen and intelligent man, and could tell many a story of bygone days. A rather extraordinary thing was, that ho had, through his long intercourse with English speaking people, forgotten his mother tongue —German. In his diary, which was regularly written up for many years after his coming to New Zealand, many interesting accounts occur of the incursions of Bloody Jack and the Native quarrels. His life in the hands of a competent biographer would form an interesting page in the early settlement of New Zealand.