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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Taranaki, Hawke's Bay & Wellington Provincial Districts]
Mr. William Smith
Mr. William Smith was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland, where his father was an architect. He came to New Zealand, via Melbourne, in the clipper ship “Shalemar,” and landed in Napier in the year 1885. Since then he has gone through a varied experience. Taking up land on the bank of the Tutaekuri river, near Puketapu, he underwent all the difficulties and privations of a pioneer. He remembers the starting of the first bullock-sledge in the district at Poraite, and heard the rumble of the first horse-dray in Napier. When Hawke's Bay province was separated from Wellington, in 1858, he was appointed to the office of deputy-provincial auditor, which he held until the abolition of provincialism in 1876. During the disquieting times of the Maori disturbances his family lived quietly in the country, whilst he was engaged as a militiaman at the Omaranui fight, for which he holds the New Zealand medal. He ultimately succeeded in acquiring sufficient property to enable him to retire. page 410 He is an active member of the Napier Bowling and Golf Clubs. In the year 1851 he married a daughter of Mr. Thomas Alexander, a Forfarshire farmer, and niece of the late Mr. Alexander Alexander, one of the first Enropean settlers in the district. Mr. Smith has had eleven children, of whom nine survive.
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Mr. W. Smith.