Preece the Missionary.

The christian names of Preece are a reminder of the fact that the Great Bishop George Augustus Selwyn was his godfather and namegiver. Preece's father, James Preece, was the first English Missionary to establish a station in the Urewera country. It seemed a thousand miles away from the comfortable mission station at Tauranga when the pioneer Preece and his wife set up their home at Ahike-reru in the ’Forties of last century. It was the heart of savage old New Zealand, the home of the most conservative of all the Maori tribes. The people lived in their entrenched and palisaded villages on the hilltops. Preece persuaded many of them to abandon their forts and settle in the valleys and cultivate the soil. His home was among the Ngati-whare tribe who were linked up with the neighbouring Urewera. You may see the site of the Ahikereru mission station to-day if you go motoring through the Urewera country by the Rotorua-Waikaremoana bush road. It is about a mile from the wayside village of Te Whaiti; a gently rounded round of soft green acacia trees indicates the long-deserted home of “Te Pirihi.”