PERSONAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1921, Page 4

PERSONAL.

Mr. J. W. Winfield, of Inglewood, who has been on a trip to England and America, arrived in Wellington on Monday, and returned to Inglewood by the mail train last night.

Mr. G. Rutherford, an elder brother of Sir Ernest Rutherford, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Rutherford, 'arrived in New Plymouth by the Rarawa yesterday morning on a visit to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Rutherford, of Fillis Street. Brigadier-Genei al the Hon. Sir diaries G. Bruce has accepted the leyulership of the Mount Everest expedition of 1922 (says a cable from London). General Bruce served in Burma and the Indian frontier before the European war.

Mr. Geo. Stringer, clerk for the Hawera County Council, while giving evidence in a case at the Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning, suddenly became ill, and had to be assisted from the room. Mr. Stringer had been in the witness-box for some time, and collapsed suddenly. He was carried outside and placed on a chair, and was subsequently removed to his home in a taxi. Court proceedings had to be suspended for a few minutes-—Star.

At the annual meeting of the Southland Power Board Mr. W. Hinchey was elected chairman, his salary being fixed at £3OO per annum. Mr. Herbert P. Thomas, of East St. Kilda, Melbourne, was appointed chief engineer at a salary of £l2OO per annum. Mr. Thomas graduated at Melbourne University and the McGill University, Montreal, and has had fourteen years’- engineering experience in Canada and the United States, where he was engaged on a. number of large electrical installations. He is at present chief engineer to Thomas Coates and Co., Melbourne.— Press Association.

Among a very wide circle of friends in Wanganui district, in the South Island, and in Auckland —in fact, right throughout New Zealand—the news of the death of Mr. Thomas Mitchell (says the Chronicle) will be received with much regret. The deceased was a very old colonist, a man whose character" and whose career as a settler earned him the esteem of all. He died at Gonville, Wanganui, on Saturday, at the ripe old age of 78 years. The late Mr. Mitchell was born in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1844. He was educated there and brought up to farming in the south of Scotland. At 19 years of age he left the Old Land for Queensland, where he had two years’ experience with sheep and cattle. Then he came over to New Zealand and worked on North Otago, Central Otago and Green Island properties. on he came to the North Island, and managed the late Mr. Purviss Russell’s Hatuma estate, in Hawke’s Bay, for a short period. Once more he went south, settling in South Canterbury, where he acquired the Seaforth estate. He there married Miss Emily Freeman, daughter of an old Otago settler. In 1904 he bought the sheep property of Waratah, in the McKenzie country. In 1906. selling out both properties, he moved to Southland, where he purchased the Warwick Downs estate of 22,000 acres, near Winton- Two years later he disposed of this property, and acquired the Richmond Downs, in the Waikato, this being the last poperty owned by the Assets Realisation Board. He disposed of this farm in 1910, when he purchased from Mr. Studholme the well-known Ngaturi estate, in this district. This farm was leased to his two sons in 1913, when Mr. Mitchell decided to retire from active farming. Accompanied by Mrs. Mitchell, he made a trip to Great Britain and America, and on his return settled down in Wanganui.