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Page 15: 50th Jubilee Commemoration supplement

1) Bitter blow when Levin site rejected.
invitation to Massey College ceremony received by council "with regret".

The bitterest disappointment Levin has had in its 50 years as a borough was when the Government selected Palmerston North and turned its back on Levin as the site for Massey Agricultural College. Now a show place and tourist attraction, Massey College was once the centre of controversy which raged throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand and stimulated a North Island vs South Island war of words.

2) Why are there so few really old houses?.

Some samples of heart matai taken from a house ercted over 60 years ago were produced in the Levin Courthouse in 1947 to illustrate a point made by a local builder that a house built of such timber would last a "life time". The court was impressed by the condition of the timber.

3) Laid aside the plough which turned the sod of his pioneer farmland and donned the wig and gown.

"... the turf gave way to the furrows at his feet. His hand guided the plough but he was not earthbound..." He was not exactly what one would call an Adonis. Aged about 18, tall, lanky, neither boy nor man, unmanageable straight, red hair, a red, sunburnt face with many freckles, and so self-conscious that his own boots appeared to be studied more than all else about him.

Page 13: 50th Jubilee Commemoration supplement

1) Land was cheap and terms generous for a settler who was willing to clear his holding from bush.

First class town, suburban and rural land in the centre of one of the most fertile tracts of flat country at prices varying from £2 to £6 an acre. That was the offer made by the Crown Lands Office in 1889 after the Government survey of the Levin area.

2) Survivors of massacre first to clear bush.

The clearing where the Ostlers - the first family in the Levin block - settled, was the refuge of Maori survivors of Te Rauparaha's massacre.

3) Terms of settlement on land in 1889.

"Charming, romantic township". This is the description above the sale notice of another block of block near Levin, put

up for auction by T. Kennedy, MacDonald and Co, on instructions from the Manawatu Railway Company.

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