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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

Te Kuiti

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Te Kuiti.

Te Kuiti, in the county of Kawhia, is 126 miles to the southward of Auckland, on the railway line. The county of Kawhia, of which Te Kuiti is one of the business centres, is noted for the great extent of its excellent limestone land, some of which is heavily timbered, and for the number of its genial and sheltered valleys. Te Kuiti receives and despatches mails twice a week, and it has a post office savings bank and a telephone service.

Rountree, John, Auctioneer, Te Kuiti. Mr. Rountree was born in the North of Ireland in 1852, and arrived in Lyttelton when he was ten years of age by the ship “Ivanhoe,” with his parents. He learned the trade of a butcher and from 1868 to 1872 was on the Thames goldfields, where he was in business on his own account. On returning to Christchurch, he established the first boiling down works in the colony, and conducted the business for four years. For four years subsequently he was engaged in the grain and produce business, and then removed to the West Coast, where he became a mining advocate. Three years later he removed to the North Island, and went into the cattle trade, as a member of the firm of Wylie and Rountree at Waitara. Mr. Rountree settled in Te Kuiti in 1898, and established himself in business as a storekeeper and dealer in live and dead stock. He has since taken up the business of an auctioneer and farmers' agent. In 1900 he succeeded in getting the Kawhia County gazetted by an Order-in-Council under the Auctioneers' Licensing Act, and took out the first license as an auctioneer in the district. During Mr. Rountree's residence in Christchurch he served for a number of years as a member of the St. Albans Borough Council. He was married, in 1879, to a daughter of Mr. G. Sergeant, of Auckland. This lady died in 1898, leaving four sons and four daughters, and in 1899 Mr. Rountree contracted a second marriage with a daughter of Mr. J. McKay, of Millbrook, Waipu.

A Carved Maori Whare, Te Kuiti.

A Carved Maori Whare, Te Kuiti.