Just a brief note to let you all know that our Kintalk blog has now merged with sister blog Heritage et AL. If you subscribe to Kintalk, then I encourage you to change your subscription over to Heritage et AL to be sure of being kept up to date with all the family history happenings, and to learn more about our heritage collections and heritage news.

Kintalk first went live in July 2008, originally edited and authored by Karen Kalopulu and the family history team; and was carried on in her name after she passed away in 2009.

Popular and information rich posts from Kintalk have been migrated over to Heritage et AL, so you will find them there instead.

Heritage et AL was launched in May 2012 . . .  "Four research centres and the Sir George Grey Special Collections and a whole heap of incredible heritage library collections, arranged around two harbours and many volcanoes! Plus cool links and heritage news stories. Stay tuned .."

Now both blogs will be together on the Heritage et AL blogspot - so don't forget to subscribe to keep up to date!

Happy hunting . . . 


Seonaid

At a recent talk here at Auckland Libraries, many of us came away buzzing over ideas on preserving ‘our’ story. What can we do right now, to get those interesting things about ourselves organised for posterity?
Our speaker, Jan Gow, discussed a computer programme called Treepad, that has a free edition, but also a  paid edition with useful add-ons such as the ability to save images. But as she said, there are other options, too. For the paper-addicted among us, the stationery sections at book stores are our happy place, from basic binders to the joy of the beautifully-covered journal. One could purchase a different journal for each decade (perhaps colour coded?), and add to it over time. If spread-sheets are so your thing, you could come up with something practical there. And you could always make up an e-book, which I’ll address in a later post. Publishing an e-book can cost you virtually nothing, and you can easily get print copies for little cost, as well. The message is that there are plenty of ways that suit you of getting your story down for that life-long work-in-progress.
A number of practical ideas came out of this.
Take copies of your photos and find out the story behind the image. Write down what you remember about it. Many of our parents, or even us, have slides (remember those?)  One could project slides and simply photograph them from the big screen, but there are devices to copy slides you could look in to. It could be something worthwhile for a family history group to invest in for members to borrow.
Identify significant occasions. Some ideas are transportation (your car-owning history over the decades is a great one!), games, pets, holidays, schools, careers, special events, and of course food. You could scan recipes from Grandma’s old recipe book to add to your collection. That gorgeous prize-winning shortbread...! You could organise your story according to these categories, or by the decades.
Remember to catalogue precious items. What is the story behind that china teacup, or painting, or your grandmother’s ornament? Photograph the item, and add the image to your work in progress with details of the story behind it. Scanning letters, cards and newspaper clippings is a good idea, too. This could be a great thing to do to get the kids (and let's face it, adults!) off social media for a spell, too.
One thing that appealed to me was to make a day of combining oral history with cataloguing. A family member recently suffered a stroke, which brings home abruptly how sad the loss of one's memory can be. When I visit next, I plan to spend time going through those tea cups, ornaments, paper items, and inherited furniture that none of the family really knows anything about, photographing them and jotting down the story behind them. Recording the conversations on my phone will help. Not only will it, I hope, be a form of therapy for them, but also fun, and for our family, a record of our own family history.
For more ideas, have a look through our catalogue here. I've used the reference 1 GEN  DOC. There is inspiration aplenty, such as the books  Keeping Family Treasures and Keeping Chronicles: Preserving History Through Memorabilia.
 Joanne - Central Research

This was an interesting post from a few years back that we thought you'd enjoy again.

An interesting little read on our shelves is the book 'Til death us do part : causes of death 1300-1948.

As the author Janet Few says in the introduction, “One thing that all but our most recent ancestors have in common is that they are dead.”

This small but fulsome book discusses the many possibilities of our ancestor’s deaths. The cancers and heart disease that end our lives today were much more difficult to diagnose until the twentieth century and the lifestyles of our ancestors made them less prone to contacting them. Instead, they could look forward to famines, epidemics and infectious diseases.

http://www.traveldarkly.com/plague-pits-london/

Few describes the different kinds of plague that could be experienced and their symptoms’…hard dry boils, particularly in the groin or armpits and it normally took three days to die.’ A range of preventatives included what was known as a ‘tuzzy muzzy’ , a bunch of herbs to warn off the bad smells, and urinating on a mixture of yarrow, tansy and feverfew, and then drinking the strained liquid.

The Seventeenth century plague doctor www.medievalists.net

Work related diseases led to the demise of many of our ancestors. Tuberculosis, also referred to as consumption, phthisis, decline or the white plague, was a product of urban poverty, poor nutrition, and work conditions. It was very infectious, with late teenagers often the victims.

Occupations determined certain ailments in their workers. Examples are: knife grinder’s asthma, Mad hatters’ disease (mercury poisoning, which was often contracted by those working in the hat industry), and fossy jaw (caused from ingesting phosphorous; the disease of the match girls).

The names of these diseases are intriguing in themselves. Summer madness, also known as St Anthony’s fire, Sacred fire or Invisible fire, because the skin turned black as if burnt, was common in times of bad harvest when poorer quality crops were eaten.

The green disease, or chlorosis, also known as the virgin’s disease as it was prevalent in teenage girls, was blamed on tight corsets and studying too hard with matrimony frequently prescribed as a cure.

War was responsible for the deaths of many of our ancestors, with the armed forces far more likely to die of disease than in combat. In the Crimean War only one in six casualties died in battle.

www.medievalists.net

Being a wife was a dangerous profession with between five and ten percent of all mothers dying in childbirth until the mid-nineteenth century. The list of options was grim: childbed fever, blood loss, and toxemia. Abortions were illegal and therefore dangerous.

In the days before Health & Safety, our ancestors drowned in wells, were burnt by open fires, fell off horses and ladders and suffered frequent bouts of food poisoning caused by a lack of refrigeration and the foraging for food in woods and hedgerows.  Although our health is better and we are vaccinated against the very things that blighted our ancestor’s lives, we do manage to die in ways they could never imagine.

Bridget Simpson

Brad Argent (Ancestry) gave a talk in October at the Central Library on DNA.  The talk came after the Family History Expo in Auckland, and was focused on the science of identity. As Brad said, DNA testing is no longer "just" a tool to help you work out your family history. It is so much more than that and it brings with it potential issues.
He posed some thought-provoking questions:
Does the absence of something in you change who you are, and how you see yourself? For example, if you grew up in a Maori community, and saw yourself as Maori, then get a genetic result back that says you're not Maori... do you stop being Maori overnight? He talked about the memetic self  - that is, the part of you made up of those "things" passed down to you through your culture, your family, and the family stories.
What, he asked, happens when you've grown up hearing stories but learn you are not biologically connected to them? Do they just go away?
Likewise, if you learn you're adopted and want to find out who your parents are, does that then negate all the family stories your adoptive parents gave you, that you grew up with, that have shaped who you are?
Someone raised the point in the talk about the security of your DNA with the firms that test it. Brad asked the question: what is your responsibility with your DNA and the information contained in it, that could affect a whole lot of people?
I could go on and on, but take a listen (or a re-listen) to this fascinating talk yourself on YouTube.
The talk is captioned, and you can check out other speakers from the Auckland Libraries Lunchtime series on our website here.
DNA is an incredible new tool but also with an unknown future. Brad made the point that we no longer build up our identity over years and years of painstaking research, microfiche-by-microfiche, card-by-card, record-by-record. Now we spit in a tube, six or eight weeks later click on a button, and suddenly we are, potentially, someone else. A lot to think about in the amazing world of family history research.


Joanne - Central Research

The old adage about putting flesh on the skeleton used by genealogists reinforces the beauty of using local histories when building a picture of your family.

Heritage et al recently blogged about the most recent winners of the J. M. Sherrard award in New Zealand regional and local history.

The ultimate award went to Robert Peden for his book, Making sheep country: Mt Peel Station and the transformation of the tussock lands (Auckland University Press, 2011). Writing on early agriculture, “the economic and ecological transformation of New Zealand”, the information on the early high country sheep farmers and the decisions they made about where they, and how they, farmed provides social context to those others farming in nineteenth century New Zealand. Although focussing on Mt Peel station and John Acland’s experience of establishing large-scale sheep farming, what Mr Acland went through could easily provide the background for a family historian’s understanding of how life was for their own ancestor. As written in the book’s preface, “Acland’s story is in many ways typical of the experiences of his fellow pastoralists.”

Making sheep country : Mt Peel Station and the transformation of the tussock lands by Robert Peden

Another winner from the J. M. Sheerard awards for 2010-2013 was David Verran’s book on the North Shore, The North Shore : an illustrated history (Auckland, N.Z. : Random House, 2010).

This book is also an excellent example of how you can glean a picture of the way your ancestor lived through studying the local history. One of the chapters is on boatbuilding and the various boat yards that existed. Described are these various yards, their owners and how they operated; “At about the same time that the Holmes family was building the Waitemata, George Beddoes’ shipyard was constructing a schooner and three cutters. Other work this yard undertook included the repairs and alterations to a paddle steamer. It was this shipyard that built the paddle steamer Devonport in 1870, the first timber and steel ship built in New Zealand.”

Bailey and Lowe's boatbuilding yard at Sulphur Beach, Northcote Point, around 1910. The North Shore : an illustrated history by David Verran

Auckland Libraries holds a large and varied collection of local histories from throughout the wider Auckland region to around the country. You can search our catalogue under the name of the area to see what we have in our collection.

Bridget

Centenary photographs from Auckland Libraries Heritage Images

Women of the J D Richardson family. Sir George Grey Special Collections,  Auckland Libraries, 4-2419

Mr Cooper and family. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-A17229

Mr and Mrs Shaw with grandchildren. Sir George Grey Special Collections,  Auckland Libraries, 4-8903

Some treat reads have come into the Auckland Research Centre of late and if they pique you interest, there are borrowable copies within the Auckland Libraries system as well. These are the kind of books that are nice to pick up and dip into at any time.

First up, the 1950s gets a look-in with “Life in 1950s London.”  An interesting decade between the second world war and the counterculture of the sixties.

It’s worth flicking through for the fabulous photos, and if you did happen to have been around at the time, reminiscing about life. How, for example, nearly everybody smoked, the growing popularity of sports like boxing and football, the rise in coffee drinking, and international events like the Billy Graham crusades. It would be interesting for those who remember the decade to compare how it panned out with life here in New Zealand.  This is one of a series on decades, and we also have the 1940s title.


Sticking with the UK, we have another fascinating read, “Beneath the Big Top.”


It’s a “social history of the circus in Britain” and is laden with all sorts of titbits, misdemeanour and fun, from the beginning of the circus up to the more recent spectacle of Cirque du Soleil. A fascinating chapter on the 19th century looks at the likes of Barnum and Bailey and on the trend of mysticism and spiritualism that was big at the time. The author claims writers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were followers of the spiritualism fad - a combination of magic and spirituality. And even royalty loved the circus. Queen Victoria was apparently so fascinated with Isaac Van Amburgh, the big cat trainer known as the “Lion King,” that she had a portrait painted of him with his cats. Naturally clowns, murder and debauchery, and the effect of television on the circus get a look in. A book to have a browse through when you feel like some light but entertaining reading.

Joanne Graves

Recommended read

Backwater by Joan Bauer (1999)

I have to say I am completely loving reading these YA (young adult) novels as part of our Summer Reads series. These are seriously smart books, great for kids and for adults and like the previous Greyhound of a Girl and Holes, Backwater is a true delight of a story. It’s funny, smart, emotional, with a great protagonist in Ivy Breedlove. In fact, I loved it so much, I ended up reading it all over again.

Told in first person, sixteen-year-old Ivy Breedlove is the youngest in a family of lawyers and of course is expected to study the law, even though she doesn’t want to. History is her love – and her Breedlove family history is what her brilliant legal father calls an obsession she is “totally enslaved” by.

She tells him:

“I could be on drugs, Dad. I could be smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. I could be-“
“Getting ready to study the law.” I could almost mouth the words. “When I was sixteen, Ivy, I had read every piece of literature there was to read concerning America’s great law institutions where fine men and women learned to love the law, learned to defend it to the death, learned to not take no for an answer.”
“Learned to bill by the hour,” I added, and Dad said that as God was his witness, a law education was the cornerstone of a successful, fulfilled life.
“You know, Dad, there are important people in this family other than lawyers.”
He coughed.
“What about Mercy Breedlove who lived in the time of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement and believed so strongly that women should have the right to vote that at seventeen she embroidered the front and back of a dress with Susan B. Anthony’s words of freedom: Men, their rights, and nothing more. Women their rights and nothing less. And she wore that dress day in and day out with everyone pointing at her, screaming at her to stop. That was long before anti-perspirant, too.”
“Embroidery,” Dad sputtered, “is not a proper Breedlove career.”

Ivy is writing a family history she hopes to have completed for her Great Aunt Tib’s birthday, yet the more she researches, the more she becomes fascinated by her family, from her late mother whom is barely talked about, to her mysterious Aunt Jo who has disappeared off the face of the planet. The story is about Ivy’s search for her missing relative, who like herself, eschewed the law to follow her own “unacceptable” passion. Yet it is also about learning more of her late mother.

Here Ivy asks her aunt if she remembers her own mother’s funeral:

“Do you remember your mother’s funeral?”
“Some parts.”
“I don’t remember anything,” I said. “I had this dream right after she died that I was on a mountain and birds were flying over me and I was standing in the tall grass that was wafting in the breeze.”
“You remember that?”
“I dreamt it.”
“No, you didn’t.”

And of course like any good teen novel, we have romance, and naturally all good boyfriends are called Jack. Says Ivy of her Jack, a hopeless mountain ranger (it’s set in New York’s Adirondack mountains), “Jack Louden might not be major ranger material, but in the boyfriend department, he redefined the genus.” Goes without saying, this book has a most wonderful ending.

Go here if you are interested in borrowing Auckland Libraries' copy.

Joanne

Recommended read

Holes by Louis Sachar (1998)

In this second post on young peoples’ fiction with a family history theme, I read the award winning novel, Holes  by Louis Sachar.

I’m not sure how it is I never really knew about this book before, when it’s been around for a while and has something of a cult following. This is seriously good fiction, with baddies, delinquent kids, a mystery, a curse, and a backstory to keep you guessing – the family history part of it. Whatever your age, child or adult, boy or girl, you should read this story. There’s a good chance you won’t be able to put it down.

Stanley Yelnats is our protagonist -  the loser kid we’ve probably all felt like at some time or another but poor Stan really does have bad luck, attributable to a family curse. He’s sent to a juvie camp out in the desert:

“A sign in front said, “You are entering Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility.” Next to it was another sign which declared that it was a violation of the Texas Penal Code to bring guns, explosives, weapons, drugs or alcohol on to the premises. As Stanley read the sign, he couldn’t help but think, Well, duh!

Each day the boys must dig a massive hole - something to do with building character although if they find anything, they are given a day off. Hmmm. I won’t give anything away but a reviewer said that Holes is the kind of book that improves with each reading, showing you just how complicated it really is although as a read, this is simply a darned fine story that ties up at the end.  And there are nice bits, such as this at the end of a chapter after Stanley has taken the rap for stealing a bag of sunflower seeds:

He went over to his hole and to his surprise it was nearly finished. He stared at it, amazed. It didn't make sense. Or perhaps it did. He smiled. Since he had taken the blame for the sunflower seeds, he realized, the other boys had dug his hole for him.
“Hey, thanks,” he said.“Don’t look at me,” said X-Ray.Confused, Stanley looked around – from Magnet, to Armpit, to Zigzag, to Squid. None of them took credit for it.Then he turned to Zero who had been quietly digging in his hole since Stanley’s return. Zero’s hole was smaller than all the others.

Click here to grab a library copy though you might need to place a hold.

There are also formats from eBook to audio CD, and if the weather falls apart over the holidays, there’s the 2004 movie on DVD with young Shia LaBouef as Stanley.

Here’s the trailer. But go and read the book first!!

Joanne

Recommended read

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle (2011)

I’m on a bit of a mission at the moment reading kids’ books, courtesy of one of our leaflets here at Auckland Libraries recommending children’s fiction with a family history theme. What better way to share the reading love, after all, than to read the story for yourself. Even better, it’s a kid’s book so you can finish in an hour or so.

First up on my mish is this wonderful Roddy Doyle story, A Greyhound of a Girl. It’s a lovely story, pretty much about death.  Four generations of Irish women – 12-year-old Mary, her mother Scarlett, her dying grandmother Emer, and the ghost of her great-grandmother Tansey come together as Tansey (who died in her 20s) wants to see her dying daughter, Emer (now elderly.) It’s funny, emotional, witty, plenty of flashbacks chronicling the girls, and absolutely suitable for all ages so don’t just get it for your kids to read. Read and enjoy it for yourself -  especially if you love things Irish and great dialogue such as this:

“Well,” said Tansey. “I’m a ghost. It sounds a bit daft, but I’m the ghost of your great-granny.” She looked at Mary. “Are you surprised?” she asked.
“Not  really,” said Mary. “If you are my great granny then you have to be a ghost or something, like. Because she – you’ve been dead for ages.”

“Clever girl,” said Tansey.

“Prove it,” said Mary.

“Prove that you’re a clever girl?”

“No,” said Mary. “Prove you’re a ghost.”

And later on, the young ghost Tansey meets her ailing eighty-something daughter, Emer. Emer speaks first:

“I think I know you,” she said

“Good girl.”

“You’re my mother.”

“Yes,” said Tansey.

“Have you come to collect me?”

“Not yet,” said Tansey. “There’s no hurry.”

“But you’re dead.”

“I am.”

And even better…. If you’re travelling over the holidays, we also have an audiobook you can click here to borrow. Not a bad way to pass the time on the “Are we there, yet” trek!er the summer holidays and have fun reading, completing challenges, 

For summer reading fun, get the kids or grand-kids involved with Dare to Explore - Out of this world, Auckland Libraries summer reading adventure. Visit the Dare to Explore homepage for more information or join up at your local library.

Joanne Graves
Central Auckland Research Centre

This year we are celebrating a decade of lock-ins from when the idea first came to the then Family History Librarian, Karen Kalopulu.

Back in 2004 Karen Kalopulu proposed the idea to library management saying that, although the ‘concept is new to libraries in New Zealand’ there are ‘many libraries in United States of America which have strong family history collections hold[ing] very successful lock-ins’.

Since Karen sadly passed away in 2009, the lock-ins have continued under the leadership of Family History Librarian Seonaid Lewis.

Family historians and aspiring family historians start arriving during the afternoon of the last Friday of August, working overnight on their family histories and helping other people with theirs, until leaving at 8am the next day.

The lock-ins have been a collaboration between Auckland Libraries and the New Zealand Society of Genealogists (NZSG), who have supported this venture right from the very beginning with their volunteers contributing to the expert knowledge available on the night. The event has proven to be great fun, we have all learnt so much from each other and have made some good friends along the way.

There are a handful of customers and NZSG volunteers who were at that first lock-in and are still coming today.

The inaugural Lock-in group, 2005.

Geraldene O’Reilly, the NZSG president of the Irish Interest group, has attended every single one of the lock-ins, helping many a fledgling search their Irish ancestry.

Geraldene O'Reilly busy at work.

The format Karen started has carried on, with a few unavoidable tweaks along the way.

Before the evening kicks off at 8pm there are the options of a tour of the Central Auckland Research by Seonaid and then a seminar on some subject, whether it’s Scottish family history or, as it is this year, beginning your New Zealand family history.

The night begins with Seonaid leading a 'meet and greet' and then the library staff  NZSG volunteers share their areas of specialty.

A happy researcher!

We then hit the computers, Microfilm readers and books and the momentum continues. Flagging souls help themselves to coffee and snacks in the library atrium and we are all revived with pizza at midnight.

Some succumb to a nap, in a cosy nook but it is amazing, with kindred family historians around and lots to share and learn, how the buzz keeps you going.

There have been many eureka moments:

I finally found something that could possibly lead to more information on my maternal grandmother's birth - the first really good lead in 25 years!

Came away with some exciting information it was certainly well worth it.
Can't wait till the next one.

I got so much information on the night that I am going flat out working out what I need to do next.

I managed to stay awake all night much to my surprise - the time seemed to go so fast.  I found a really good skeleton in my mother's side of the family so was very happy.

As Karen said in her proposal, back in 2004, ‘a family history lock-in is an opportunity to promote the Auckland City Library and it’s family history collection in an innovative way and provide a platform for Auckland City Libraries to work collaboratively with the New Zealand Society of Genealogists on a venture that both organisations are passionate and enthusiastic about.’

We are looking forward to more great research and sharing in August 2014. To register for this year's event, click here for more information.

Bridget

Auckland Libraries’ has a fabulous new on-line magazine collection, Zinio, for those of us who just love our magazines. The mags are free to read on your laptop, tablet, phone or PC, there’s no waiting list, and while some of us might be just desperate to get our hands on the latest Runner’s World, Yoga for Beginners or Train like an Olympian (or – let’s be real here – Best Cookies Ever, Christmas Baking, and Woman’s Day Comfort Foods), there are a couple of publications that the family history enthusiast might like to take a look at.

First up is the very stylish Australian magazine, Inside History. As the blurb says, “Inside History is for people passionate about Australian and New Zealand genealogy, history and heritage.” It’s published every two months, with “insightful, interesting and practical features… packed with advice, articles and expert tips on genealogy, and stories on our varied history.”


The second magazine you can borrow from Zinio is the UK magazine, Your Family Tree (not to be confused with Family Tree) with “… practical advice, written by experts, on all areas of family history research.”  Their aim is to make family history accessible to all.

You can read both of these on iPad, Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Win 8, PC/MAC and some back issues are available. You’ll need to be a library member to create accounts but then you’ll be away.

Here’s the link to Zinio – or if you prefer, the URL is:

http://www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/EN/collections/eMagazines/ziniogettingstarted/Pages/ziniogettingstarted.aspx

… which is worth a browse just to see what else you can read – especially in the Food and Cooking section!

Joanne Graves
Central Auckland Research Centre

Country travelling on the Thames-Coromandel Road, 1907. Sir George Grey Special Collections, AWNS-19070725-13-2.

In case you haven't heard the big NEWS, the New Zealand Herald has been digitized up to 31 December 1945 and is now accessible through Papers Past!  The Auckland Libraries homepage currently has a direct link to the database or alternatively, Papers Past can also be found under "P" in the A-Z listing of eResources in the Digital Library.

There has never been a better time to delve into your family history research and see what newsy items about your ancestors were published in the New Zealand Herald. Best of all, the contents can be downloaded, printed or saved in a pdf format for your records. If you would like some user friendly tips on getting the most out of searching on Papers Past, check out our research guides by clicking here.

While browsing through the pages you will also discover quirky, interesting articles and bits of gossip that will undoubtedly provide you with endless hours of distraction.

New Zealand Herald, 4 March 1939

New Zealand Herald, 22 March 1941

New Zealand Herald, 13 January 1927

Papers Past now has 83 titles and over 3 million pages of digitised content available. Besides the Herald and Auckland Star, the following list of historical newspapers on Papers Past also have Auckland content:

Happy searching!

Karen

For those of you with an interest in Scotland, you may have noticed in recent months an increase in material appearing on the shelves in the family history section at Central Auckland Research Centre. However, those of you who may not visit the Research Centre as frequently or the check the catalogue regularly from afar will have missed what we have been adding to the collection.

Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, 601-2835A.

A number of local histories have been added to the collection which range from picture books to stories about a street in a town, a guide to closes, squares, lanes etc in old Dundee and a small work on the Kirk Yetholm gypsies are among the works added to local histories.

We have also purchased transcripts of parish registers, amongst which is the Lady Glenorchy Free Church baptisms 1843-1856; monumental inscriptions (gravestones), several family histories, items relating to occupations such as two on fishing in Fife.  There is also the Records of Glenprosen [Glenprossan], Angus which includes christening extracts, monumental inscriptions, entries for marriages and deaths, communion rolls and a list of subscribers to the library from 1841.  Not to be outdone, there is also the two volume work of Scottish Studio Photographers to 1914 which gives details not only of different addresses the photographers worked from but potted biographies that can include other members of the family, census returns and value of estate on death.

So if it has been a while since you checked out our Scottish collections (call number - 4 SCT) take a little time to do so and you may be lucky and find that entry that has been eluding you.

Marie 

NZ electoral rolls – tips and tricks!

So, why are electoral rolls such a big deal for NZ family history, anyway? The answer is that we don’t have the personal information from the NZ census of past decades such as exists for England and some other countries. So electoral rolls are one of the sources that we use as a substitute. Through them, we can find the living place and (often) occupation of ancestors who qualified to vote. However, that’s also where things get a little complicated, because the rules about who could vote have evolved over the decades since the 19th Century and the changes affect which ancestors appear on rolls and which do not.

To help with this problem, the Auckland Libraries website has a NZ Voting Rights Timeline of important dates when rule changes were made about the eligibility to vote. Some like 1879 (male franchise) and 1893 (women’s franchise) have a very big impact. Others (like changes over time about the age at which people could vote) are more subtle, but still important.

Lady voters going up to polling-booth, election day, Auckland, 1899. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-A12353

The NZ Electoral Commission’s website also has a section called The History of the Vote which I recommend  to researchers wanting more historical background. It offers some interesting snippets of social history – such as an account of drunkenness and corruption in Auckland elections of the 1850s, including tampering with the electoral rolls!

NZ electoral rolls 1853 to 1981 are now digitized and available through Ancestry.com. This database may be accessed through the Auckland Libraries website on library premises for free. (It is not available through the website from home computers.)  NOTE: scroll to the bottom of the page of the NZ electoral roll database and you will find a detailed list of the election years covered. Those (few) without an asterisk beside the year are not yet searchable by voter name, but only browsable.


New Zealand Electoral Roll for Geraldine District, 1876.

For the years after 1981, come into the Auckland Research Centre on level 2 of the Auckland Libraries building in Lorne Street, in central Auckland. We hold a full set either on microfiche or hard copy that continues to the current – 2013 year.

Janelle

There are certain records such as UK census records that are frequently consulted for doing family history research. Unfortunately, no such records exist for New Zealand so we have to rely on other records to find information about households - two popular alternative sources are the Wise’s Directory and of course, the NZ Electoral Rolls.

One our customer’s who regularly searches Papers Past for historical information about Auckland
came across a news item in the 9 February 1883 edition of the New Zealand Herald reporting on a City Council meeting which offers insight as how these records were introduced into the library's collection.

Check back later this week for a new blog post from Janelle with some tips and tricks on the NZ electoral rolls.

Karen

As mentioned in my 18 December blog about searching for passenger lists, particularly for those of us with ancestors who arrived through the port of Auckland, things are looking up!

Landing passengers, c.1910. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19100721-3-1

There is another online source which might help. The free website offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints now includes NZ passenger lists digitised from microfilms held by Archives New Zealand. An online name index is gradually being built up by volunteers (they still want help if you feel like joining in) and is worth checking. If you don't get a hit on the family name, there is an alternative, but be warned it is not a quick fix.

It is possible to browse through the more than 350,000 images of ship passenger lists for the period approximately 1855 to 1973. Now, I am not suggesting this for someone who hasn’t a clue on what ship or in which year their ancestor came into Auckland. However, if you have got a hit in either the Auckland Area Passenger Arrivals Index, or the online newspapers' shipping news, which means you have a ship name and date of arrival, then the task, although onerous, is possible!

The images of passenger lists are arranged by port and year, with different sequences for Auckland. For instance there is 'Auckland',  'Auckland (inwards)',  'Auckland (other ports also listed)', 'Auckland and Hawkes Bay' and so on. Each of these categories needs to be checked in turn to see if they cover the year in which you are interested. Where that year is listed you need to check through the listings of that year to see if your ship name appears. Where it does, scrolling through the images will reveal the original record and date of the passenger list(s). But be warned. Some vessels, particularly Trans-Tasman ones, made multiple trips into Auckland in the same calendar year so care is needed to check you get the right date of arrival.

So what do you get as the reward for all this effort, I hear you wondering?

Image from NZ, Immigration Passenger Lists, familysearch.org

Well, the results are variable. Some passenger lists are hardly more useful than the brief stuff in the papers, but others yield details such as ages of passengers and ethnicity. Some include occupation and (at least by the 20th century) some give a basic address from their place of origin.

The results may be rewarding or disappointing, but that is the essence of all family history research, is it not?

Good luck!

Janelle

Oh, and I should add, these search strategies and techniques work for other ports as well. For a discussion about finding passenger lists and some of the online sources that exist for other NZ ports, see my blog post from 25 May 2011.

This book on the “What’s new?” shelf  at the Central Auckland Research Centre caught my eye the other day  –  “Family Secrets: Living with shame from the Victorians to the Present Day” by Deborah Cohen.

The issues covered – divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality, adoption, interracial children - barely raise an eyebrow today but they have been huge causes of distress in the past.

It’s a fascinating book to dip in to as it traces real people and gives an understanding as to why they did what they did – why adoptee parents feared their children finding out they were adopted,  the stories behind the “bachelor uncle”, the stigma of being a “bastard” child. A fascinating chapter is devoted to the children who disappeared – mentally disabled institutionalised boys and girls and how attitudes differed Victorian to early 20th century times.

The author concludes the book by discussing how getting all these “shameful” secrets out in the open has become something of a badge of honour, with the growing popularity of celebrity-featured entertainment shows like “Who Do You Think You Are?”  This is a book that may well provide breakthroughs for the family historian in the brick walls of their sleuthing - well worth a dip in to. "Family Secrets” is in the Research Centre under 4 GBR FAM but there are borrowable copies in the Auckland Libraries collection.

Joanne