St Pauls Papanui Cemetery - Christchurch City Libraries

At 11 o’clock there was a full choral service in the church, Bishop Harper …
delivering an interesting and thoroughly appropriate address, special reference
being made to the means which had, at various time, been resorted to for
calling people together for worship.
The church was crowded and to very many of those who were present the
unwonted sound must have vividly recalled early associations.
The Rev. E. A. Lingard, who had charge of the treble bell, started the ringing of the
bells. After the service, luncheon was held in the schoolroom, at which the Rev. F. G.
Brittan presided, John Matson sitting at his right hand. The parishioners presented
John Matson with an illuminated address which was ‘beautifully emblazoned on
parchment in colours and gold in a frame of elaborated inlaid native woods’. John
expressed
… thankfulness for the prosperity which had attended him during the 15 years
of his residence in Canterbury and the pleasure he felt in giving from that
prosperity the bells they had heard that morning. The afternoon was devoted to
sport in a neighbouring paddock and the evening to an entertainment in the
schoolroom.
In Christchurch there is no danger in being a benefactor of the Church of England.
Public life, however, brings many stresses. For years John Matson’s constitution
seemed up to it. Although he refused to seek a seat in the Canterbury Provincial
Council or, later, Parliament, he was prominent as an advocate of various policies.
One of his projects was the Midland or West Coast railway and he helped found the
league which pressed for the construction of the line. His advocacy of the construction
of the … railway which ‘in season and out of season, he was always urging, was an
instance of his steadfastness to anything he took up’.
John Matson gave financial support to Sir Julius Vogel during the 1884-87
StoutVogel government. Later he took up the Liberals and, at Tattersall’s Horse
Bazaar, introduced Premier Richard John Seddon to the Canterbury public.
Today Seddon’s desire to cut up big estates and allow small men to gain access to the
land seems tame. To Matson’s clients, big men who feared the loss of their acres, the
idea sounded like revolution. They could not dislodge the Liberals but could, and did,
desert Matson. The auctioneer’s promising son and namesake died, John’s health
collapsed and, about 1893, he handed the business to his three surviving sons. Late in
1894 he fell ill. ‘For some little time … Mr. Matson … [was] confined to his room
with the disease to which he …succumbed’, aged 50, on 15 April 1895. The bells at
St. Paul’s church rang a muffled peal in his honour and Bishop Churchill Julius took
the funeral service.
The conservative Press commented:
For many years Mr. Matson’s vigorous personality, push and energy made
him well-known, not only in his own immediate locality but all over the
colony. He had a wonderful vigour of character and, once he took up a line, he
St. Paul’s Papanui Cemetery
2007
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