Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 044

Transcript

Kerr, W. Wilson’s Clerk, Fifties

As showing the go as you please style in which business was carried and the opportunities men had to establish themselves by credit, Mr William Wilson once gave notice in 1862 that “All goods accounts supplied from January 1857 to 31^st Decr 1860, have recently been posted, or delivered. It is requested to settle by cash or bills bearing interest, else will be sued for” Happy days! Some, close on five years running.

The first mention of SYDENHAM was a crockery shop kept by one Charles Prince near Cookham House, afterwards burnt down. The Railway land as it was called, now Sydenham, originally belonged largely to the Wakefields. E.J. Wakefield exchanged the land on which some of the Railway Station stands for an imported entire horse with Mr Moorhouse. With adjoining land 126 acres were auctioned in 1861, by Aikman & Wilson, specially called “Railway Town”. I think Mr Prince afterwards removed to the neighbourhood and kept a school but cannot say if that had anything to do with calling “Railway Town” Sydenham.

There was also a block of some ten acres which the elder Wakefield gave to William Schmid (who had been his servant in Wellington) which he afterwards sold to Mr Thomas Russell of Auckland, who had previously bought a large block.