OBITUARY.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1922, Page 4

OBITUARY.

MR. FRANCIS RICHARDS. The death took place yesterday of a well-known and highly respected New Plymouth resident in the person of Mr. Francis Richards, of Avenue Road. He had been ailing for a considerable time, and his death was not unexpected. The late Mr. Richards was born in Cornwall in 1853. so that he had almost reached the allotted epan. He married Miss Merinda Ellis, of Penzance, and they came out together in the ship Howrah, arriving in New Plymouth in 1874. For a time he worked on railway construction between Moturoa and Inglewood. Then he assisted the late Mr. John Handy in his carrier’s business, subsequently going into business in the same line himself, and remaining at it for 25 years. He sold out, and bought a farm on the Avenue Road, which he worked up to the time of his death. Except for a trip Home, he lived in New Plymouth for 48- years. During the Parihaka trouble, the late Mr. Richards drove ammunition and commissariat waggons between New Plymouth and the encampment at Parihaka. *

Deceased was of a retiring disposition, but was fond of sports, and for a number of years was a vice-president of the Star Football Club and patron of the Avenue Road Card Club. He leaves a widow and family of nine—one daughter (Mrs. E. B. Coburn, of Auckland) and eight sons, Messrs. F. Richards (Auckland), James (Wellington), and Thomas, Harold, Les Sam, Albert and Leo (New Plymouth