Rossiter Crescent

Rossiter Crescent lies just west of the old New Plymouth Town Belt. It took its name in 1975 from the family who had owned and farmed the land which this street traverses.

The Rossiter family arrived in New Plymouth in the ship Lord William Bentinck on 6 January 1852.  The family came from Mid-Somersetshire.

By 1861 the premises of Rossiter & Son in Devon Street was a local landmark. In an advertisement in the Taranaki Herald in December of that year, the shop offered Prime Cheese at 1/6 per pound, and butter ‘fresh from the farm every day.’

In October 1862 a horse threw James Rossiter to the ground in the yard of the Masonic Hotel. Despite injuries feared to be life-threatening, he recovered and lived another three decades.

From 1872 to 1882, regular shipments of hides and bundles of skins from J. Rossiter & Son left Taranaki for Manukau. In 1878, casks of tallow went to Southern Ports, accompanied by bales of fungus shipped by Chew Chong.

Daughter Martha died young, aged only fourteen, on 14 February 1868. Two adult children died in 1887 within weeks of each other.

Mary Rossiter died in March 1889, after a long illness, aged about 70 years, at the family residence on Cutfield Road. She had stayed in New Plymouth during the wars when many others were sent to Nelson.

James died aged 74 years in August 1890. The “very old and respected settler” had been a successful farmer, and operated a butcher’s business in town. “Rossiter’s cheese" and butter were remembered as household words in the settlement.

Ten members of the Rossiter family are buried at Te Hēnui Cemetery.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.