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.
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| 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.
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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.
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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. |
Some comments from the 2014 Lock-In guests:
Catherine Bell of Cambridge said:
“This is the fourth year I’ve come to the Lock In and
I got more out of it this time than any year previously because I’m more
familiar with the library. We’re finding out where more resources are. The more
you come, the better it is and the staff are exceptionally helpful – I’m
definitely coming next year.”
Margaret Treneman of Auckland:
This is my seventh Lock-In and I’ll be back next year.
This year I especially wanted to research the session minute books (now held by
Sir George Grey Special Collections) for St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church for
details about parishioners in the First World War. I ended up discovering some lovely snippets. For
example, in 1917 there was a move to start a Sunday evening service at the
Tivoli Picture Theatre in K Road to reach “the non churched and lapsed
Presbyterians.” The congregation unanimously agreed to it, St David’s
Presbyterian in Khyber Pass protested, the Session went ahead anyway and asked
St David’s to withdraw their protest, then Presbytery said the plan violated
the Presbyterian Book of Order, and so St Andrew’s suspended their decision.”
Karen Lark and Sheila Holden of North Auckland
Karen and her mother Sheila from North Auckland had a
massive research breakthrough on the night when they located details of an
ancestor they’d been unable to find for years. They also located his military
records and discovered he’d been an ANZAC in the First World War.
“We never knew he was an Anzac and it’s making the war
commemorations more memorable for us knowing we had a relative who fought. If Seonaid
hadn’t told us about the sites we would never have found about this relative –
Seonaid and the staff have been so helpful.”
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| Joanne washing dishes, which is the smallest of her very many and varied talents.
Happy hunting . . .
Seonaid and the Family History Team
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Joanne Graves (staff)
This was the fourth time I’ve worked at the Lock-In
and I just love the whole experience. It’s quite buzzy, you get to know the
regulars, and there was an inspiring number of new faces this year. Each time
it amazes me how well everyone just gets on with their research, and how many
of them keep going right to the end - and then plan where they’re going for
breakfast. Some just want to go home and sleep!
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| Jan Gow QSM FSG assisting a guest with ScotlandsPeople |
