There are four settler graveyards around the edge of the Mahurangi harbour.
The Te Kapa cemetery on Miller Way at the top of the peninsular is still operating and is now administered by the Auckland Council. Many of the Scandret, Snells and Goldsworthy families are buried there.
The Te Muri urupa sits within the regional park at the back of Te Muri beach. John Sullivan whose cottage still stands in Dairy Bay is buried there, as are members of the Jackson and Roa families.
The Pukapuka cemetery is a trustee run cemetery, This small graveyard is the last resting place of many prominent Mahurangi West settlers.
The Mahurangi East graveyard on Ridge Road is sited on land gifted by William Grant to the Presbyterian Church as a Free Burial Ground. Like so many settler graveyards the cemetery is somewhat un-kempt as families have moved away. With the passage of time, some of the inscriptions on the headstones have become too weathered to read and some gone completely. Records are incomplete and there have been times when a plot thought to be unoccupied has been found to contain a resident. We have old cemetery records including a site map of the cemetery and a listing of the inscriptions supplied in 2015 by the Kasper family. Those headstones that are readable are inscribed with familiar names of early settlers in the Mahurangi Heads area. Among those buried are William Grant who gifted the land and built the church and members of his family. There are also graves for members of the Algie, Darrach, Darroch, Dawson Kasper and Scott families.
The Darrachs buried there are my grandfathers,grandmothers,uncles and aunties special place for them to lay together where there families started off in no mahurangi ship building
Wow, that is truly magnificent. William John Grant Senior is My Papa’s great-grandfather through his Mum. I live near Gulf Habour, so not far from Mahurangi East. Recently I took the kids to visit this Urupa & I stood there overlooking the harbor, probably where WIlliam stood in the 1800s when he and his brother purchased land, where WIlliam built the church with his bare hands in his 90s – I felt emotional & just thought, goodness what a voyage of a lifetime across the ocean from the top of Scotland to land in the SI of New Zealand, then settle in Mahurangi East. Scotts Landing, which I only realized means! Where the Scotts landed. It is courageous at 20 years old to take on the Ocean Voyage across the Atlantic and look for prosperity.