The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "the great mistake" for Te Hēnui.
[1] An ordinance by the Taranaki Provincial Council dated 28 October 1861 set aside 24 acres (9.7 ha) and established the first public burial ground in New Plymouth.
On 13 February 1869, a war party of Ngāti Maniapoto led by Wetere Te Rerenga killed all three men, a woman and three children, and also the Wesleyan missionary John Whiteley who arrived shortly afterwards, at the isolated Pukearuhe Redoubt, some 57 kilometres (35 mi) from New Plymouth.
[2] With the abolition of provincial government in 1876, the cemetery came under the control of the New Plymouth Borough Council.
[3] The main entrance to the cemetery is located at the intersection between Watson and Lemon Streets,[3] where memorial gates were installed in 1924 on the request of Alice Honeyfield, a former resident then living in Sydney.