FIFTY YEARS IN PAEROA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5381, 30 January 1929, Page 2

FIFTY YEARS IN PAEROA.

MILS. CROSBY’S ANNIVERSARY. I Yesterday, held as Anniversary Day of. the founding of Auckland, was also the anniversary of the arrival in Paeroa of Mrs Catherine Crosby, proprietress of the Royal Mail Hotel, fifty years ago. Mrs Crosby came from Melbourne by the “Hero” to join her aunt, Mrs Mahcsney, the first Pakeha woman in Paeroa, and owner, of. the old Belmont Hotel, on the site of which the; present Royal Mail stands.

Mrs Crosby’s journey from Auckland to Paeroa was in the “Pataka,” Captain Dalton, which vessel landed her and her sister, opposite to where Miss .Snodgrass now lives, there being at that time 20ft. of wate;r in the river near the old: wharf. Mrs Mahoney was first established in an hotel at. the Puke, to which place, in order to build a bakehouse, she and her husband rowed a boatload of bricks from Thame;§. At that time the Maoris would! not permit European’ settlement in or around where Paeroa is, but later, on the country being opejied, the Mahoneys transferred their hotel here. For so : me time after Mrs Crosby’s arrival all was quiet, but as the result of a party of surveyors being; attacked great uneasiness was fqlt in the district, and 600 constabulary arrived for defence purpose's in c.ase of serious trouble, which, fortunately, did not eventuate. Mr Daldy Macwilliams, at present living in Waihi, a m'qmber of the surveying party ambushed, was shot, and was left behind as dead. A courageous woman, of Pakeha and Maori parentage, rescued Mr Ma c williams by dragging him through the scrub to protection at Paqroa.