There is a quirky gem of a magazine in our heritage serials collection titled NZ Plumbing Heating & Ventilation Review.

In the No 4 April 1964 publication, one of my colleagues spotted an article Old Letter Revealed Merchant Firm's Origin,  the old plumber merchant's letter was actually found hidden in a desk drawer at the premises of George McCaul Limited, whose office was located on Wellesley Street.

For anyone who has visited us at the Central Auckland Research Centre, you will know that we are located at the intersection of Wellesley and Lorne Streets; in fact George McCaul Ltd traded from a building which was demolished in order to make way for Auckland's new library.

There are many articles in the NZ Plumbing Heating & Ventilation Review featuring local companies, their employees and business advertisements. Some of the editions are indexed and searchable through the Index Auckland database.

Plumbing work by journeymen students, 1905. Sir George Grey Special Collections. AWNS-19050202-16-6

Auckland Council Archives which is also located in the same building as the Research Centre, has an online name searchable database of plumbers and drain-layers. Click this link to access the Auckland City Council License Register of Plumber and Drain Connectors 1904-1921 database.  The record details include the person's qualification, for example journeyman, and whether they held a full or provisional license as a plumber, drainer, or drain connector. 

Karen

At the Research Centre we frequently have customers looking for passenger lists for ancestors who travelled from the UK through Australia with their final destination being New Zealand.

Recently FamilySearch.org added  new records to their database for New Zealand passenger lists. We were able to  trace the voyage  from London to  New Zealand for Rev Harold James West Knights and his family in 1927.

In this way you can pick up multiple journeys and links in the chain from the United Kingdom to New Zealand.

I have recently finished reading Lloyd Jones’s book, A History of Silence: A memoir. Lloyd Jones is the author of  the gripping Mister Pip which starred Hugh Laurie in the book’s movie interpretation.

Jones relates the fascinating journey he went on to discover his mother’s family, something she claimed to know nothing about. In his childhood was the shadowy figure of his estranged grandmother, bitterly declaimed by his mother, but there was nothing further. The silence in the title is the layers upon layers of blankness about his family history and the silence he lived in with his working class parents. Theirs was a house with no family photos and no family stories.

The tragedy of the earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 lead Lloyd to investigate his own foundations and family past, a search that takes him from Wales to a devastating court transcript.

The book makes compelling reading and is an interesting read for family historians. Click through to reviews in the Telegraph and in Australian Book Review. There are borrowable copies available from Auckland Libraries.