Burgon Road in the small South Taranaki settlement of Ōkaiawa was named after Richard Burgon, a farmer, methodist preacher and early Pāhekā Ōkaiawa resident.
Richard was born in Chorlton upon Medlock, Lancashire, England in about 1844, one of ten children to John and Sarah Burgon. He married Martha Oates in 1880 in Yorkshire, England and they both immigrated in New Zealand sometime after this date.
By 1887 the couple were living in Ōkaiawa and by 1891 had acquired a crown grant for a 250 acre section towards the end of what became, Burgeon Rd.
Richard was a staunch member of the Methodist church and for many years a local methodist preacher, which often saw him travelling by horse back to visit the various methodist communities of south Taranaki.
It was through his efforts that the Union Church (Methodist and Presbyterian) was built in Ōkaiawa in 1893. It was used by the community until about 1948 when it was removed to Manutahi and a new concrete church was built.
Apart from farming and church activities, Richard became well known for his regular letters to the editor on both prohibition and ‘free trade’. In fact, he gave regular lectures on free trade in both Hāwera and Okaiawa during which he proposed that free trade, as opposed to trade traiffs, would result in goodwill among all nations and great progress and prosperity.
In September 1919 he wrote a letter to the editor of the Hāwera and Normanby Star berating the lack of attendance at his latest lecture, due he felt, to pull of other attractions; “like pictures, concerts, entertainment etc. Yet, although my subject may appear a dry subject, it will well repay our study, and the more we study the more interested we shall become”.
Early in their farming life, the couple, who had no children, had built a large six-bedroom home, known as Welsey Grove (no doubt a nod to their methodist beliefs) which was a notable homestead in the area.
They retired to Hāwera in 1915, after spending a year touring the ‘home country’ and lived in the Hāwera and Normanby areas until Martha died in 1928 and Richard the following year.
A month after Richard’s death a house fire totally destroyed Wesley Grove, the couple’s last remaining link with the road that was named after them.
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