OBITUARY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 962, 4 March 1911, Page 3

OBITUARY.

THE “FATHER” OF WELLINGTON.

Mr Thomas Wilmor McKenzie, familiarly known as the “father” of Wellington, passed away on Thursday, in his eighty-fourth year. Of this period he had lived seventy-one years in Wellington. With his death, it might well be said, is severed one more of the links that bound the past with the present, for there was none among the later baud of colonists whose life had been so closely associated with the destinies of the capital city. Deceased arrived in Port Nicholson in the ship Adelaide in 1840. He owned and edited the “Wellington Independent,” now the “ New Zealand Times.” Mr McKenzie was the oldest elder of St. John’s Church, and he heard the first sermon preached ashore in the Port Nicholson settlement —at Petone, by the Rev Mr McFarlaue, Presbyterian. He, with Sir William Fox, Messrs Featherstou, Charles Clifford, A. de B. Brandon, and W. E. Vincent, formed the constitutional committee which assisted in framing the New Zealand Constitution. which was sent Home by Sir George Grey and accepted. Deceased was an enthusiastic Mason and Oddfellow. Mr McKenzie, whose wife died about twelve years ago, leaves a family of five sons and four daughters, viz., Messrs Henry Alex. McKenzie, George A. McKenzie, Earl McKenzie (Petone, late part proprietor of the Hutt and Petone Chronicle), Leonard S. McKenzie (president ot the Federated Association of New Zealand Chemists), and John McKenzie, Mesdames H. A. Morris (Petone), Sills J. Gibbous (Island Bay), G. C. B. Harper (Makirikiri, Wanganui), and Miss McKenzie, The eldest daughter of the deceased was the first wife of Mr James Mackenzie, Commissioner of Crown Lands. The funeral took place in Sydney street cemetery this aftermoon.