Albie Paton and the Maungaturoto 150th committee, had gone through the trouble of listing the Burial Plots, and names of the people buried at the Maungaturoto Congregational Church Cemetery for the celebrations held in November last year. I photographed the list and the cemetery map recently. The Kaipara District has no online access to any of the cemeteries in the area, this includes Maungaturoto. I've created a website for the Maungaturoto Cemetery Records. This is still a work in progress, given the large amount of burials and names I still have to enter into the website database. At the time of writing, I'm currently doing the Cullen family list, which is quite an extensive one.
The forgotten war grave of Harold Frederick Cullen
During my investigations into some of the names listed in the burial register, I've discovered there are the graves of several war veterans, two of which are Commonwealth War Graves. One of them, Ivan Davidson Cullen (WW2) is listed with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), whereas the other for Harold Cullen has been somehow overlooked. At first, I thought I had photographed the same gravesite twice. But as it turned out, I had in fact photographed two separate war graves. I've since written to the CWGC advising them that Harold Cullen is not showing on their list. Harold died at the young age of 30, due to complications caused by his service in the First World War. With the 100th Anniversary this year of the start of the First World War, it's important we all pay our respects to the men who fought for their country in this war and the wars since. I hope this year we see those men's graves and memorials with flowers on them all, so in spirit they know they have not been forgotten. Lest we forget.
