PALMERSTON’S FIRST RESIDENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2414, 6 April 1922, Page 2

PALMERSTON’S FIRST RESIDENTS.

AN INTERESTING NARRATIVE.

Mr C. A. Bergersen writes as follows to the Manawatu Times: —“I am thankful to you for having brought to our memory the events of fifty-one years ago. I would like to point out that you are in error in saying that. Mrs Cole was the first white woman resident of Palmerston North. Mrs Linton the second, and Mrs Snelson the third. In 1871 eighteen Norwegian families arrived at Wellington in the ship Selene. They stopped in Wellington for three weeks, and came to Foxton by the s.s. Luna on the 15th of February. They left Foxton and arrived at Awapuni on the 16tli, sleeping that night under flax hushes. On the . 11; jliey slept, on Mr. Cole’s, verandah, where Airs Linton was staying. Of these eighteen, two stayed behind in Foxton, and sixteen women came to Palmerston North, before Mrs Snelson ever saw Palmerston. When Mr Waldegravc came, he brought a keg of rum, and five sheets of corrugated iron, with which he built a small place just where the railway crossing is, near the Commercial Hotel. Mr Jonson (the late Mr Andrew Jonson, of Avenue Road) of Foxton, had the first shop in Palmerston North, Mr Snelson the second, and Air S. Abrahams the third. Bishop Alonrad had nothing to do with the eighteen immigrants mentioned above.”