KIDNAPPED 22 YEARS AGO

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 79, 20 August 1912, Page 3

KIDNAPPED 22 YEARS AGO

AX AUCKLANDER'S ROMANTIC STORY. Kidnapped '22 years ago by his grandmother from a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, Christopher Daniel Saunderson, known as Clins Ward, an employee of the United Railroads in San Francisco, a youth who has been living for some time past in Oakland, was recently identified through the efforts of Thomas Westoby, 717 Sycamore street, Oakland, and is now returning to his mother, Mrs. Charlotte Saunderson, who still lives near Auckland.

According to the story told by Westoby, the lad was kidnapped by his grandmother when about two years old and brought to California where his father, Charles Saunderson, known as Charles Ward, was living. Saunderson, senior, is now dead. In 1906 Westoby became acquainted with Saunderson and his grandmother, who has since died, after the great earthquake and fire in San Francisco, where the pair were living at the time. Saunderson has also discovered that he has a brother living in Auckland. The cause of the kidnapping is said to have been due to a quarrel between thu parents.

Sannderson, who arrived in Wellington last week by the Manuka from Sa°n Francisco, told a Dominion reporter that just before the earthquake, wheJi he was doing work in connection with the ptist office, his friends almost got into communication with him; but. about that time he took up work elsewhere, and they once more lost trace of him', and thought that he might have lost his life, in the great disaster. , Subsequently, however, an advertisement in the. Auckland Rtar, asking for information as to his whereabout, was brought' under the >tice of Mr. Westohy, and soon after that he got in'to communication witli his people in Auckland.