In amongst our computers and film cabinets, we have six
8-drawer cabinets full of CD-ROMs containing a mixture
of databases and pdfs of books.

They are hidden treasures, used mainly by the experienced researcher who realises that not everything is online as yet and that family history societies and self-published authors still use CD-ROM technology, as its relatively cheap and easy to make their projects available.

Although all CDs are listed on the library catalogue, we also have a handy index to assist customers  with seeing what is in this unique collection.

The first couple of pages list the newly received CDs which amongst others, include various Berkshire and Oxford parish registers, and a 200 disk set of Stonepics Newfoundland cemetery images and transcriptions - this collection is so large, its in its own black binder and is on top of the CD-ROM cabinets!

If you want to view what we have available in our CD-ROM collection, just click the link here to open the pdf document.



Hope to see you soon . . .

Happy hunting!

Seonaid

One of the websites I receive a newsletter from is Lost Cousins run by Peter Calver in the UK.

While I don’t subscribe to his site I get the newsletter as I find this really useful in that he often announces when discounts are available for various sites or advises how to get more bang for your buck, informs of books of interest and of course events etc relating to the genealogical world.

In his newsletter of 8 February 2016 he has provided a link to the database of Red Cross volunteers WWI (currently A-V; the rest is still to come).

This is a wonderful database.  You enter either a full name or just a surname, there is also provision for including location/hospitals and role/duties.  Once you have entered the details you get a list of results (or not).  The image below is what the results look like (I have cropped other information out).

You then click on the name of the person of interest (I only used a surname) and you get a transcript of the record as well as a digitised image of the record.




This is yet another resource you can use to find out what your family may have been involved in during WWI.

Marie Hickey

Sir George Grey Special Collections,  Auckland Libraries, 1-W1814

Was your ancestor an engineer in NZ? If so, here are some sources of possible interest for you to explore. 

The Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (known to its friends as IPENZ) operates an excellent website on NZ's engineering heritage. It includes a small database of biographies of significant engineers.

If you know the engineering field your ancestor was involved in, some of the works in the 'recommended reads' section may also prove of value as background material.

Auckland Libraries has both reference and loan copies available of Early New Zealand engineers by F.W. Furkert; revised and edited by W.L. Newnham. This work is a collection of alphabetically arranged mini-biographies of engineers who were born prior to 1866.

Along with some other sources on engineers, the names from Furkert's book have been indexed into the New Zealand Card Index; for example:



The New Zealand Card Index was closed in 1996 when Index Auckland started. As the name implies, this index has a strong emphasis on Auckland, but also contains references to places and people from further afield; it is worth checking for engineer ancestors even if they are not Aucklanders.

Among the items indexed are obituaries and other biographical mentions of engineers appearing in selected issues of the Proceedings of the Institution of Professional Engineers 1938-1952 and the journal New Zealand Engineering, 1946-1972 (indexing not yet complete).

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-A15208

If your ancestor was already a qualified engineer when they migrated to NZ, or spent part of their working lives in the UK, then they may have joined one of the professional engineering societies in the UK. Some membership records of these are now available as searchable databases on Ancestry.com.

The contents vary, but some have considerable detail, such as the Institution of Civil Engineers’ collection of applications to join the society 1820-1930. Entries often include date of birth, nationality, and summary of education and career, sometimes with supporting correspondence and certificates. Engineers are a highly mobile occupational group, so such information might well include details of service all over the world.

Janelle

Access  New Zealand WWI and WWII military service personnel files.

This week Auckland Libraries is celebrating Samoan Language Week starting today through to 1 June 2014. The nationwide theme is ‘Taofimau i au measina’ or ‘Hold fast to your cultural treasures’. We have found some Samoan family history treasure!

Many of you reading this will use the subscription database, Ancestry.com on a fairly regular basis but how many of you ever refer to the card catalogue?

There are probably quite a number of records “hidden” away treasures that we are unaware of, and an example of this is some select records of baptisms (1805-1910) and burials (1895-1970) for Samoa. To access these, click on “card catalog” which is in the lower left-hand side of the Ancestry.com Home Page.  Enter Samoa as a keyword and you will have a selection of record sets including these select baptism and burial records.

The entries on Ancestry are only transcripts but do give a (FamilySearch) film number and are included in the catalogue entries for films held at the Central Auckland Research Centre - the desk staff are always available if you require any assistance.

The Ancestry.com database it is accessible through Auckland Libraries Digital Library from within any of the 55 libraries for free.

Marie Hickey

     New records added to




If you have not looked at the website, findmypast recently, you may be unaware of their current scheme to add 100 record sets in 100 days.  This will cover parish registers,  military records, death and marriage notices from newspapers.  New record sets from around the world will be released weekly.

Image from www.findmypast.com.au website

To date, the following records have been added:

New York City marriage and death notices 1835-80
[USA] Civil War – soldiers, sailors, prisoners, medals of honour 1861-65
pre 1901 Irish census (some counties only)
Shropshire parish registers 1538-1900, Banns 1760-1900

Military
Malayan Emergency  - Commonwealth Deaths 1948-60
Welsh Guards 1914-18
Palestine Conflict British deaths 1945-48
Cyprus Emergency deaths 1955-60
Royal Artillery other ranks casualty cards 1939-47
Royal Artillery attestations 1883-1942
Australian Imperial Force – embarkation roll & nominal roll 1914-18
Royal Navy seamen & officers 1899-1919
Royal Marines 1899-1920
Royal Fusiliers – Stockbrokers Battalion 1914-18 & 23rd Battalion (1st Sportsman’s Battalion) 1914-18
South Down Battalions (11th, 12th & 13th Royal Sussex)
Salford Pals (15th, 16th, 19th & 20th Lancashire Fusiliers)
Liverpool Pals (17th, 18th, 19th & 20th King’s Liverpool Regt)
Glasgow Pals 1914-18
Edinburgh Pals 1914-18 (15th & 16th Royal Scots Regt)
1st Bradford Pals (16th West Yorkshire Regt)
Birmingham Employers’ Roll of Honour 1914-18
Birmingham Pals 1914-18

Sailors from the German naval ship Alexandrine which visited New Zealand in 1891. Sir George Grey Special Collections, 4-RIC176.

This looks as if it is going to be a very interesting and useful collection of records when the project is completed -- well worth checking on for new additions.

Next time you visit your local library, findmypast is accessible from the Family History eResources & databases in the  Digital Library.

Marie Hickey

Exciting news from ...

Findmypast has recently made changes to their search engine and project manager Paul Dunlop says they have made some improvements and along with that is a bit of a "learning curve". So, before you plan your next trip into Auckland Libraries to access findmypast you may want to watch this short video or read the article Your handy guide to findmypast’s new search on their website.

Image from findmypast news published 21 March 2014.

The video introduces the new search platform that will provide the user with a "flexible approach" to searching the collections.

As of the beginning of April, the library edition of findmypast is allowing users to start their own accounts similar to the how customers access The British Newspaper Archive website within the library -- "this means they'll be able to use our personalised services and save their own family trees." If you already have an account with findmypast, you will now be able to log in to your own profile on the library computers. For those customer who don't want to set up an account, you will still be able to continue to access records as a guest by using the search all records option on the new-look homepage.

A preview of  findmypast's new homepage.

On an entertaining note, if you are an iPhone user findmypast has introduced an app, I Once Was, according to the developers "it is a fun take on what your job might have been in the past and what you would have looked like." Simply answer two questions and upload an image of yourself, so I gave it a go. Hmm, present day librarian but historically . . . a sailor! Ships ahoy everyone.

Karen

POSTSCRIPT:
We encourage interaction and feedback on all Auckland Libraries' blog. However, apart from that one comment below, we won't be posting any further responses that are complaints about Findmypast. 

While we understand and sympathise with people's frustrations with the current difficulties, this is not the best place for people to vent their concerns. These should more properly be directed to Findmypast's customer services team.

We have been reassured that issues are being prioritised and dealt with accordingly, and hope to see a much improved new Findmypast website in the near future.

We are very excited by the new datasets that Findmypast have released recently, and are waiting in eager anticipation in what is going to come soon.

Kind regards

Seonaid Lewis
family history librarian, Central Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries

The Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand (1868-1961) is one of the New Zealand's most important research publications, particularly for science.

Website:  rsnz.natlib.govt.nz

It is another rich resource for historians that can now be accessed online. The database is browsable by topics, images and includes an A-Z list of authors. The coverage is beyond the science world as  it event contains obituaries of individuals who have contributed to the New Zealand scientific community.

As an example of the content in these volumes read the descriptions given by clicking these links to the Old Redoubts, Blockhouses, and Stockades of the Wellington District or about the weather for 1896 or Notes on the Derelict Ship in Facile Harbour, Dusky Bay by T.M. Hocken.

Murchison Glacier in the Southern Alps, 1901 Auckland Libraries AWNS-19011107-9-2

The Hon J.B.A. Acland and Messrs C.G. Tripp and Charles Harper climbed the Rangitata (and Murchison) glaciers in the Southern Alps in 1860.  G. E. Mannering's article provides a historical account of the time but it also of relevance to those individuals wishing to fill out the stories of their ancestors and provide context to their adventures.
Bridget

What were working conditions of children like in Britain in the 1840s?

I was checking out the library edition of Ancestry.com for any newly added databases to bring to the attention of staff recently and came across the 1842 Commissioners’ report of children’s employment (appendix, trades and manufactures part 2) .  It is a very interesting document in that children and adults from all over the British isles have been interviewed about the working conditions children are being employed in.  Not only that but you get the child’s name, age, occupation, address of home and work and sometimes mention of other family members and pay rates.

Two children and a trolley laden with boxes, c.1928 Sir George Grey Special  Collections, Auckland Libraries.

The document has been name indexed so is searchable but there is also a name index at the end of the work as well.

If you are interested in social history, you will find this worth reading.  It is rather a lengthy tome but probably dipping in and out of the interviews would be enough to give a flavour of the document.

Marie Hickey

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

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.

We have a lot of delicious family histories that have been donated to us, or purchased by us, in our collection. They come in every shape, size and format.

When we receive a new family history we pop the details of it into our family history database. In this database we input the family names of generations of a family. It’s a wonderful tool for searching for a surname that may be found in someone else’s family history - that also happens to be yours!

At the moment I am inputting a door stopper of a family history called From River Thames, England to peninsula waters, Canterbury, New Zealand : the story and history of Arthur and Louisa Waghorn, 1850-2000 onwards.

                                                
In her forward, the author Virginia Mayo writes, “I make no apology for mistakes and the lack of much background history – our elder generations did not keep diaries and so the recording of their lives and the early happenings are lost – we can only piece together with a lot of guess work their early days and times in New Zealand.”

As shown on page 244.

At 690 pages there has been a lot more than guess work in this family history. Full of clear illustrations, maps, genealogical trees, portraits, memorabilia (including autograph books and a photo of Louisa Waghorn’s best black satin hat) the book is much more than the history of a family.

Bridget

Do you know what the source was for the Auckland area passenger arrivals database?

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19100217-1-2

Some of us have been lucky enough to get hits on our ancestors' names in the Auckland Libraries' online index of passenger arrivals for the years 1828-1889, 1909-1921.

However, many of us have had no luck. The index was based on newspaper lists, signatories to a book celebrating Sir George Grey's birthday in 1886, and a few records obtained from Archives New Zealand. All of these sources have gaps in the information they offer, and for a long time, there was little else available in the way of online sources for Auckland. But things have changed.

The website Papers Past offers an online and keyword searchable versions of historic NZ newspapers, including the Auckland Star 1870 to 1945 and the NZ Herald 1863 to 1924 – which will also eventually go up to 1945. Papers Past is a free website run by the National Library in Wellington. These two Auckland papers offer hope to people whose family names never appeared in the Auckland Area Passenger Arrivals Index. Many people who 'hopped across the ditch', were not indexed in the original project but their names, regularly published in the port news of the Auckland papers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, are now available amongst the lists of passenger arrivals from Australia.  Of course, those of you familiar with the way the newspapers of the day published the lists, are aware that often only family names were published e.g. Messrs Smith, Brown, Jones.... This can make identification difficult if you don't have a distinctive name to search for, so it is not necessarily a 'magic fix' to your research problem.

For additional information about Auckland and New Zealand passenger and immigration lists, consider looking at the resources section on Auckland Libraries Heritage et AL blog.

Janelle

P.S. Check back soon for Part 2 about other sources for NZ passenger arrivals.

The Central Auckland Research Centre in Auckland’s Central Library is open until 8pm on weekdays and until 4pm on the weekends. Access is free and membership is not required to browse our collections.

Bridget