THE MISSING BARONET.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1183, 16 October 1882, Page 2

THE MISSING BARONET.

♦ It will he remembered that news was received by the San Francisco mail that the English High Court of Justice had made an oi-der for the presumption of death of Sir Willian Congreve, last heard in New Zealand. The Nelson Mail tells the following strange story regarding the missing baronet : — " Sir William Congreve at one time was well known in N elson, having been a resident in the province from 1846 to 1852 or 53. He first took possession of a block of land and squatted on what is now known as the Hillesden run in the Wairau Valley, where, up to a very few years ago, the remains of his whare were still to be seen. A little later he removed to the mouth of the Awatere, and took up a portion of the Vernon run, and from thence he wandered away to the Waipapa boat harbor, where he resided for a time accompanied by the lady, who had temporarily linked her fortunes with his. But Waipapa boat harbor, was far too dull for the gay but frail creature, and her longing to remove from the the place became in some unaccountable manner known to a former admirer, then resident in the Wairau, who one night swooped down upon Waipapa in a whale boat and carried off the fair one. Waipapa then became too dull for Sir William Congreve, who shifted his quarters to Canterbury, where about the year 1854 i he was appointed inspector of sheep. Subsequently he engaged in sheep farming, but after a year or two he was suspected of certain commercial irregularities in connection with taking advances on wool, and he cleared out of New Zealand for some of the islands in the South Seas, and though enquiries have frequently been mule by those who were acquainted with him here in the old days, nothing, we believe, has ever been heard ofhinmnce. He brought from England with him a servant named Joe Sweetlove, who for many years was a shepherd on the Blairich run in the Awatere,. and is now, we understand, at a good old age, an inmate of the Blenheim hospital."