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In Memoriam

In the year 1901 Archdeacon Samuel Williams took advantage of an opportunity to purchase a sheepfarming property in Hawke's Bay which had been offered to him by the Executors of a deceased runholder.

He developed this as a thankful memorial for the lives and work of his father Archdeacon Henry Williams, and his uncle Bishop William Williams, who had come to New Zealand in the early part of the nineteenth century as missionaries to the Maoris under the Church Missionary Society, and had spent their lives in that work. Later the property was established as a Trust which was named The H. and W. Williams' Memorial Trust, from which the income was to be used in assisting the religious work of the Church of England among the Maoris, and in helping to further missions to aboriginal natives all over the world, such as are carried on by the Church Missionary Society and other Societies doing similar work. For many years these various, missions have annually benefited from this source.

Several years later members of the next generation of the Williams family built a stone memorial church at Paihia, Bay of Islands, close to the site of Henry Williams's original Mission Station there.

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