John Joseph Woods

• Illustration — Woods' manuscript One night in the winter of June 1876, Woods read about the competition in the Saturday Advertiser. According to tradition, he usually met the coach that delivered the news in the main street of Lawrence to pick up his paper. It was already 9 pm, but he went straight to his piano and in that one sitting composed the tune for what later became the national anthem. In a later letter to A.H. Reed, he explained that the words inspired him so much he had to write music for them. He entered his composition under the pen name of "Orpheus". The Advertiser sent it off with the eleven other submissions to Melbourne, where judging had been arranged by George Musgrove. In October 1876, it was announced that the three independent judges unanimously agreed that Woods' composition was the clear winner. The prize was ten guineas. The rules of the competition meant that the submission's copyright would belong exclusively to the Saturday Advertiser, which gave the manuscript to the Dunedin-based Charles Begg & Co to publish, but a nine-month delay in sending it to a publisher was followed by two months of waiting for publication. The end result was a shoddy edition with only one verse, which was rejected by the Advertiser. When promises of reprint failed to materialise, the Advertiser was forced to hand the copyright back over to Woods. He immediately organised publication by Hopwood and Crew in London, with Bracken's blessing. Bracken had not originally intended for his poem to assume the status of national anthem, and it was Woods who had consistently used the word "anthem" where Bracken referred to it as "hymn". Being a choirmaster, Woods' focus in composing the melody was to make it simple and easy for children to sing. This proved to aid its success when the Premier George Grey visited Lawrence on 11 March 1878 and was welcomed by six hundred local schoolchildren singing what was by then beginning to be labelled as the "national anthem". Grey was very taken by the music and immediately sent a telegram to Bracken congratulating him: I have just heard for the first time, by 600 children at Lawrence, your 'New Zealand anthem'. I admire it exceedingly.

Woods was deeply involved in the affairs of the town. He was a member of many local clubs and societies. He was also known as an expert on cultivating daffodils, of which his collection was the largest in the area. In 1884, Woods was elected first president of the local choral society. When Woods was made an Honorary Freeman of New Zealand, he was commended for his "efficiency, integrity and devotion to duty".