By 1911 New Zealand women had voting rights for nearly two decades, while their UK sisters still battled for their rights and a voice.  The Women's Freedom League incited members with its Manifesto to " … oppose, hamper, destroy if possible, the power of an unrepresentative Government to govern women, refuse to be taxed, boycott the Census, refuse all official information until women have won that which is their absolute right – the right of a voice and vote."

Women and the vote, 1914. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19140416-48-6

The Women's Freedom League initiated a boycott of census day, Sunday 2 April 1911, to protest their lack of rights to vote. These suffragette evaders refused to have their names added to their own household registers, effectively 'vanishing' from the census while many left their homes for the day. 

Evaders such as Louisa Burnham defiantly wrote the words "No vote, no census. If I am intelligent enough to fill in this census form I can surely make a X on a ballot paper" across the schedule.

Do you have Huguenot ancestors? 

Yes? Then you will be interested to know that we added these new 
CD-ROMS to the family history collection this week. 

1 GEN REL HUG    Huguenot Families Numbers One to Twenty
4 ENG REL HUG   Consistory and Administrative Records c. 1560-1660
4 ENG REL HUG    Reg. of the French Church of Threadneedle St, London
4 ENG REL HUG    Reg. of the French Churches of La Patente & Saint Jean, Spitalfields
4 ENG REL HUG    Reg. of the French Churches of the Cities of London &  Westminster & of Spitalfields

4 ENG REL HUG    Reg. of the Walloon & Huguenot Churches of Canterbury, Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton & Stonehouse
4 ENG REL HUG    Reg. of the Walloon & Huguenot Churches of Norwich, Colchester, Thorney & Thorpe-le-Soken
4 IRL REL HUG      Reg. of the French Churches in Dublin & Portarlington, Ireland
5 EUR REL HUG    Reg. of the French Churches of Guisnes, Cadzand, Dover & Le Mans
6 AAM REL HUG    Naturalizations of Foreign Protestants in the American Colonies

To find more resources in the family history collection, type the word 'Huguenot' in the subject search box of the Classic Catalogue and limit the search to 'Heritage & Research' in the drop down menu.

Good luck with your search!

The Family History Team

Findmypast which is available on the Digital Library now offers access to some historic Trade Union membership records, especially those for the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ).   Unfortunately it doesn’t include the other big craft Union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE).

Back in the day, I was asked for details on a carpenter who was active in Labour Party and Union politics in the early twentieth century in Auckland.  The family were unsure as to where he had first apprenticed and worked as a carpenter, but I happened to know that the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick in Britain had historical records of the ASCJ.   That Union, and others, acted as an international Union with branches worldwide, including within New Zealand.   The Centre in Warwick had no difficulty in tracing our carpenter and confirmed that he was a member of a Dublin Branch before moving to New Zealand, where he transferred to an Auckland ASCJ Branch. Members readily transferred from one Branch to another as they moved around the world for work.

Image of record from findmypast.

The example shows a page for the Mount Eden, Auckland, Branch of the ASCJ for 1911.   Note the Branch number was 892.



The particular carpenter I was looking for here was Tom (Thomas) Bloodworth who was a long time Labour Party, Trade Union and local body activist.  Note he is here just as ‘T. Bloodworth’, at number 10 on the page.

You can search by name, or drill down using Education & Work and then Record Set: Britain, Trade Union membership registers.  You can then select Image or Transcript.


David Verran

This is the first in a series of blogs about Poor Law and how to research your ancestors in the variety of documents relating to the poor both in New Zealand and Great Britain.

Many records relating to the poor have been created over the centuries and I hope that this gives an insight into the wide variety of material available.  Poverty not only breeds contempt but, often from necessity, crime.  Look at records for bankruptcy, debtor’s prison, Petty and Quarter Sessions, Assize records, militia/militia records and of course, prison records as well.

New Zealand                                                                                              
Unfortunately, there are no records that are identified as “poor law” records although laws were introduced concerning how to treat and what to do with the destitute.  Much care of the poor in New Zealand fell to charities, hospitals and the police.  The first place to look is Archives New Zealand. The website Archway lists some of the records held:

• Maintenance Order Guard Books
• Destitute Persons Criminal Records
• Papers of the Board of Public Relief 1863-66
• Destitute Children’s Home, Auckland 1870-82
• Superintendants’ Inwards Correspondence (names usually indexed on Archway)
• Hospital Board records 
• Charitable Aid Board records
• Industrial Schools records
• Vaccination Registers
• Benevolent Society records

Records can also be found amongst the departmental groups: Child Welfare Department, Department of Education, Social Security, District/Magistrates Courts.

Records of Benevolent Societies are worth looking for as they were one of the earlier charitable aid societies. The Auckland Benevolent Society (the oldest in NZ) was formed to provide non-institutional aid to women and children through voluntary charitable work. The emphasis was on personal visits, providing advice and sympathy as well as practical support such as clothing, food, blankets, rent, fares etc.

In the cause of charity: fair collectors at work in the streets of Auckland in aid of the Benevolent Society's Appeal for Funds, July 24, 1909. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19090729-1-2.

In 1885 the Hospital & Charitable Aid Institutions Act was passed and some of the records generated by this, such as Applications for Relief, are held by Archives NZ.

Auckland Hospital & Charitable Aid Board Applications for Relief 1895

Some vaccination records have survived and these are worth checking as vaccination was first introduced for the poor in an effort to stop the spread of smallpox and measles.

Another source of material is the Appendices of the Journal of the House of Representatives  available on-line 1858-1954.

For Australia check the holdings of the relevant state archives offices.

Marie

We have Fijian birth, death and marriage records on microfilm on permanent loan from the LDS in the Central Auckland Research Centre. They are divided into the categories General, Fijian, Indian and European and are helpfully indexed.

This is an example of an index, taken from Fiji births, general index 1876-1960.

A birth record may give you date, name, sex, parent’s names and ages, whether married, previous children, profession and parents’ birth place, with signature or their ‘mark’. This example is from Births general 1883-1891.


This example is from Births general 1911 in Fiji (although the child was born in 1888 the birth wasn't registered until later, along with two of his other siblings).

Our 10th annual Karen Kalopulu Family History Lock-In was a success again.

Forty-four guests, five staff and six volunteers from the New Zealand Society of Genealogists attended on Friday, 29 August to be locked in to the Central Auckland Research Centre from 8pm till 8am the next morning.

We had the pre-lock-in tour of the Research Centre, followed by a seminar "Getting it right first time".

Ancestry, Findmypast and ScotlandsPeople provided spot prizes for the evening.

Barbara won a 12-month World Heritage subscription to Ancestry, and Margaret, Joanne and Kim each won a one-month sub to Findmypast's World collection.

We started out with our usual traditional group photo.

We had two people who had attended all ten Lock-Ins.

Geraldene O'Reilly, our Irish expert from the NZSG who has been assisting since the very first Lock-In since the 2005!

Geraldene was one - our Irish expert, volunteering from the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. She'd assisted at all ten of our Lock-Ins, bless her!

Family history is about bringing families together - often long forgotten family members that you discover during the process of your family history research.

Family history can also lead you to discover living relatives who are either researching their family tree also, or are interested in your research.

Lauren & Julie (laughing) say: We are just here for a night out. No, really, Lauren is researching her granddad's family in India while I am trying to trace my father's family in England.

Some families also research together - whether by collaboration across distance, or getting together in person.

We often have mother/daughter, aunt/niece, father/son, sisters etc turn up at the lock-in to research.

Aslikia is looking for her paternal side of the family, her 2x great-grandfather who was an interpreter to the British consul in Fiji. Everything thing she has read has referred to him as the son of a Fijian woman but this one book mentions an American father. She is trying to find out if the latter is true.

Jan Gow QSM FSG assisting a guest with ScotlandsPeople

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