A MARTYRED MISSIONARY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3970, 11 July 1929, Page 4

A MARTYRED MISSIONARY.

The name of t-iie (Rev. John Wjhiteley, the martyred Methodist missionary, who was shot while on his (knees praying l just before he intended to enter a hostile Maori pa at the White Cliffs in Taranaki, will never he forgotten while New Zealand history is quoted. His marvelous journey on foot in the northern districts and at Kawhia before Ire -went to Taranaki show (lie type of man he was. He was respected by the. whites as well as Maoris, land there is a person living at Stanley Bay who was to have been baptised by the veteran missionary the Sunday following that which proved to be Iris last on earth. News has just come to hand from Australia of the death, at the great age of 89, of the only surviving member of his family, Mrs. Jane Nield, who was 29 years of age at the time of her father’s death. She was bom at Kawhia in 1840, just when the country had become a British colony, and, with her father and mother, underwent all the hardships common to an early missionary’s life in a place settled chiefly by Maoris. She married the son of an early New Plymouth doctor, who was the medical man in charge of the first hospital there. It is said she possessed many of the characteristics of her father — patiense, endurance, and a benevolent disposition. Her last visit to New Zealand was on the occasion of the opening of the jW'hiteley Me* mo|iiial Church at New Plymouth at the end of last century. She had lived in- Sydney many years, and is survived by a family of seven, 'besides many grandchildren and great grandchildren.