Agricultural & Horticultural Medals

Lot 504    Day 1    Agricultural & Horticultural Medals

Estimate $2,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au

HAWKES BAY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, struck in silver (47mm), no maker, reverse inscribed 'Awarded to/Mr. Joseph Rhodes,/for the best pen of/Saxon Merino Ewes./1866'. Hairlines and a few contact marks, otherwise toned and a rare early example.

Joseph Rhodes, born in England, was Deputy Superintendent of the Province of Hawke's Bay for several years in the 1860s-1870s and also a member of the Provincial Council of the district.^^Courtesy of Rhodes Brothers (part extract), from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A.H.McLintock, originally published in 1966.^ ^Joseph Rhodes, who ran away to sea as a youth, joined his brother William in 1843, and then established himself in business as butcher and merchant in Wellington. He afterwards spent some years in Australia, but returned to New Zealand and became a man of property in Hawke's Bay, first acquiring the Clive Grange and then the Milton Grange estates. He played his part in Provincial Government in Hawke's Bay from 1859 to 1876. Joseph Rhodes was never a partner in the South Island land, but he bought and farmed some of the original areas claimed by his brother in Hawke's Bay. He died during a trip to Australia in 1905.