17
COROMANDEL LIFE
SUMMER 2014
Horace Harsant’s Family
In 1918, just a few years after the Harsant brothers purchased
the Wigmore homestead, Horace Harsant married Florence
Marie Woodhead, a travelling nurse who was a powerhouse
activist helping the Maori and crusading for the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union (see Museum article p48). She
was also a published author, writing the story of her life in
1979,
They Called Me Te Maari.
At age 90 Florence was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal
in recognition of her community work. She died in Thames
in 1994, aged 102, survived by her three sons and two
daughters. In acknowledgment of her bicultural life she was
given both a Pakeha service and a tangihanga at Matai Whetu
marae near Thames.
Neither phone service nor road was available to Hahei until 1934.
Before that, trips to the store in Coroglen were made by foot,
horseback (with ferry shuttle) or by rowboat through Mercury Bay
and up the Waiwawa River (as noted by Horace Harsant, a fifty
mile row each way).
In the 1960s, the region grew as a tourist destination. Around
1960, Horace and Florence’s son Vaughan developed a beachside
camping ground, and then began to subdivide areas of the farm
near the beach into residential sections.
Horace and Florence’s four children
(L to R) Owen Vaughan, Joan, Fred, and Charles at Hahei.
Horace Harsant married
Florence Woodhead in 1918.
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