History of Te Puke Cemetery
By Dorothy Mutton with acknowledgement to Papers Past, National Library of NZ.

On 13 October 1882 the NZ Herald newspaper reported that the Crown Lands Board Te Puke Cemetery site recommended by the Chief Surveyor had been approved.

Two years later on 6 November 1884 the Bay of Plenty Times reported that the Tauranga County Council would not object to be appointed as trustees to the Te Puke Cemetery, but only until local trustees are appointed.

The Bay of Plenty Times of 27 February 1889 reports a thriving settlement in Te Puke with the prospect of becoming a large produce-exporting district. There is no church or police station and "the probable reason was that the settlers are too good to require them". Religious services were held in the hall [No 2 Road] every Sunday. Police were stationed at Maketu and Tauranga.

Although there was a reserve set apart for a public cemetery it was significant that the settlement "cannot run it owing to the healthiness of the district deaths being so few and far between that when one occurs it is quite an event". Since the settlement started there have not been more than half a dozen deaths and of these, half were not settlers and of the few settlers who have died, one of these few was by accident. The total population is somewhere about 300 so the death rate is "proof positive" of how healthy the whole settlement is.

By 4 October the same year the Bay of Plenty Times reported a good many enquiries for land and visitors could see the enormous strides which Te Puke had made in ten years of settlement and could not fail to see what might be done with available lands along the coast. It was also noted that after ten years the cemetery reserve had not been used. Until this time Te Puke people were buried in the New Cemetery in Tauranga.

On 2 September 1891 the Bay of Plenty Times reported that the Cemetery Trustees decided at a meeting that Mr Boucher should take a subscription list around the block to see what money they could collect to enable them to call tenders for clearing, ploughing, sowing grass and fencing the cemetery. "Mr Boucher at last agreed to take the unpleasant billet of dunning the settlers". [to dun – persistently ask for payment]. Extensive rules for the management of the Te Puke Cemetery were drawn up in April 1892 and published in the Bay of Plenty Times on the 20 April. It notes that an adult internment in an ordinary grave or vault 15s.0d; child under 10 years, 10s.0d; child under 5 years, 7s.6d. For the exclusive right of burial in perpetuity the payment of 10s.0d per 9 foot by 4-foot plot over and above the burial charges to be made.

On the 31 August 1892, the Bay of Plenty Times noted "God's acre at Te Puke received its first occupant, when the remains of the late Miss Vercoe were interred on Tuesday last week." Mary Cover Vercoe had been born in Bodmin, Cornwall in 1821 and came to New Zealand with her family in 1852. At her death on the 20 August 1892, she was living with her brother Henry Walter Vercoe and family at ‘Fairfield', No 2 Road, Te Puke. Mary is buried in Block 1 Plot 1.

On 3 August 1910 a meeting recorded that the Cemetery Board Chairman moved that the secretary write to those persons who have erected tombstones without having taken out perpetual rights requesting them to comply with regulations without delay.
By this time the Cemetery Board Members were M Ryburn (Chairman), R S Mutton (secretary), J A McGhie, H Douglas (Snr), C Barrow and S Douglas, all members of the Road Board. Other members of the Road Board noted from various early years were Phillip Bennett, Samuel Crawford, John Gain, George Dowell, T C Freeth, William Bird, Alfred Washer, William Brady, J C Galbraith and W P Harris.