Chronicle June 2015

Welcome to the Petone Historical Society June Chronicle.

Events planned for the rest of this year. We welcome your input

·  July; Thursday `16th at 7.30 in Library meeting room Launch of our Book of Memories

·  August 2nd Friday LHHS

·  September: Heritage Month. This year we would like to celebrate the importance of Heritage in Petone. The Committee has some thoughts but is still open for ideas on the best way of doing his. How do you think we should show our heritage?

·  October 12th Film Evening

·  November Don’t forget that the Jail will again be transformed this Christmas into Santa’s Grotto. Santa will be arriving from the North Pole on November 28

What has happened over the past two months?

Barbara has been very active in getting our Book of Memories ready for print. The work so far has been great.

1.  We have received a grant to help republish an “up to date” “Discover Petone” brochure along with H.C.C. We have issued some 8000 to 10000 copies of the present one over the past 10 years so it was thought we should modernise it.

2.  Some of us attended the LHHS organised May combined evening in the old Apex house. The speaker was Mike Aanodt who showed us a most interesting power point show on his trip to Egypt. Mike’s photos were very professional and he captured photos of people and places we have not seen before. The small room was full and all enjoyed the evening.

3.  Our committee joined with some from Lower Hutt to have a morning tea at the Settlers with Emma Bugden, the coordinator of the Settlers Museum to explore ways we can help each other.

4.  Pam has been busy applying for grants so we can upgrade the museum exhibits. She has been successful in obtaining grants from Hutt City Council Heritage Fund and Pelorus Trust.for money to frame our exhibits.

Our Jail Museum

This year there is an ongoing development of the Jail. With the need to remove the displays at Christmas time has come to revitalise the exhibitions. Many are all being framed at some expense and a new system of hanging them so that the walls are protected is being developed. This cost money and we have been lucky in getting some grants to help fund this.

Grants received so far this year have been –

·  Hutt City Council $1200 for our purchase of STQRY Platform in perpetuity to enable us to have more information than possible in the Discover Petone Brochure. i.e. available on line and as an app

·  Pelorus Trust $700 for Picture Framing

We gratefully appreciate the assistance from these organisations

Day Trips

Over the years we have undertaken a yearly day bus trip for members. We have visited such places as Feilding; Stonehenge in the Wairarapa; Foxton windmill and film archives; (see photos below) Dursley gardens in Wairarapa to name a few. Unfortunately as the years go by so our attendances have dwindled and we have often joined with Petone Probus to fill a bus,.This year it is proposed that we have a local bus trip mid week in June or July, to Te Papa and on to Peter Jackson WW1 Dominion Museum and ending at the cenotaph and the new Pukeatua park. To do this economically we must fill a bus.But only if members are interested. Ring Roy 5686449 or email with your reply.

Photos from 3 of our past trips

Our trip on The Waimarie paddle steamer. Wanganui River Horse drawn tram on trip to Foxrton

Stonehenge Wairarapa visit with Petone Probus

Book Talk : A book worth reading

Centuries of Change by Ian Mortimer

Those interested in how the Western world has developed should read this book. It is available at the HCC Library. Ian is a well known historian and this book shows the breadth of his research. Which century saw the most change? In each century there were some key figures who can be called the agents of changes that affected all people in the Western world. From 11th century to 20th century. It sets out what caused the major changes in the Western world. Most interesting and informative

MORE ABOUT PETONE PEOPLE WE REMEMBER......

Annie and Joe Huggan: Both Joe and Annie Huggan were mayors of Petone in the period 1956 to 1965. It is unique in having a husband followed by his wife as mayor of our town. They were old fashioned, labourites, who epitomised the borough at that time. Petone was a solid “Old Labour” working class borough that had always held sway in local council elections. I found this story about Joe and Annie on the internet. It was written by Hilda Mc Donnell who is a member of LHHS and has previously given talks to our combined group. The Huggan era was really the last of the Labour dominated councils. After WW2 the borough changed. From 1960 to 1980 it lost most , if not all of the large factories and its blue collar workers. I believe Annie was the first female mayor in New Zealand. She was followed by Ralph Love, one of the first Maoris to become a mayor in New Zealand and George Gee the first Chinese to become Mayor.. Petone is unique!

Joseph Michell Huggan Petone Mayor 1950 - 1957 (Petone libary photos) Lily Anne Huggan Petone Mayor 1958 -1965

Lily Annie Brown was born at Halifax, Yorkshire, England, on 10 March 1890 to John Henry Brown, a cabinet maker, and his wife, Rebecca Grundy Morton. She was educated in Brighouse and Huddersfield and after leaving school spent 20 years in the local textile mills. A ‘percher’ inspecting cloth, she headed the finishing department for some years.

In December 1922 Annie, her parents and an older, married brother emigrated to Wellington. At St Hilda’s Church, Upper Hutt, on 14 July 1923, Annie married Joseph Mitchell Huggan, the son of Jonathan Huggan, a stonemason, and his wife, Hannah Mitchell. Born in Pudsey, Yorkshire, on 16 June 1897, he had emigrated to New Zealand after serving in France with the West Yorkshire Regiment. He and Annie were to have no children.

Annie and Joe Huggan worked for a time at the woollen mill at Petone. By 1924 they had moved from Upper Hutt to Korokoro, where Joe worked as a labourer. By 1932 Joe and Annie had begun to run the Korokoro general store, which at first was housed in the front room of their home. Joe had a vehicle and delivered. Joe’s parents came to live with them, and in 1933 he bought the 4½ acres behind the store and built them a bach. The store later became a post office as well, and Annie Huggan established a business for the invisible mending of garments.

During the depression Joe Huggan did good work among the unemployed, and through the local relief committee Annie supplied morning and afternoon teas and lunches to relief workers. In wet weather, 20 men would sit in the shed behind their store. Joe and Annie Huggan became uncrowned ‘mayor and mayoress of Korokoro’, and were involved with the local school and tennis club (from 1946 there was a Huggan Cup). Joe was president of the new Korokoro Progressive League (also known as the Korokoro Progressive Association) which in November 1931 got a bus service started. To allay the effects of the depression, in 1934 and 1935 the league organised summer carnivals. Annie and her mother-in-law were on the carnival committee, and Annie trained girls at the school to give an exhibition of maypole dancing. In April 1934 she won prizes in the league’s horticultural show. She was league secretary from August 1935 until the 1950s.

Joe Huggan became a justice of the peace in 1932. He was also on the Korokoro Committee of the Petone Borough Council. In May 1935 he was elected to the council on the New Zealand Labour Party ticket and in November 1950 was elected mayor. The couple shifted to Cuba Street, Petone, along with an elderly uncle of Annie’s. Joe was twice returned unopposed as mayor, heading all-Labour councils, and was also on the fire board, the milk board and the Hutt Valley drainage, power and river boards. Annie became patron of many local organisations. In a gesture that typified the Huggans’ sense of fun, Annie was presented with a brooch to make up for the times her husband had been late home from night meetings. From 1940 they began keeping open house on New Year’s Eve: ‘No-one was ever invited but everyone came’.

On 6 September 1957, Joe Huggan died after a short illness. The local Labour Party asked Annie to stand for the mayoralty, and she was returned in an uncontested election. She presided over the nine-member council, chaired the same council committees as her husband had and was the council’s representative on the State Advances Corporation of New Zealand’s Hutt Valley housing allocation committee and the Hutt Park committee. Like her husband, she fiercely opposed amalgamation with Lower Hutt.

The opening of a long-planned refuse tip adjacent to a scenic reserve in the western hills in 1964 upset residents and lovers of native bush. At the October 1965 election Annie, now 75, stood as an independent but lost to Ralph Love, who had succeeded her as the Labour Party candidate.

She remained active, chairing the Hutt Valley Patriotic Welfare Committee in the early 1970s and maintaining her invisible-mending business until late in life. In 1971 she was made an MBE. Annie Huggan died on 4 May 1983 at the Bloomfield Hospice, Lower Hutt, aged 93.

Hilda McDonnell. 'Huggan, Joseph Mitchell and Huggan, Lily Annie', from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 22-Oct-2013
URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/5h40/huggan-joseph-mitchell

Paid your sub yet. If not Ring Ruth Dickson 5688440......

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