If you had an ancestor who was working on the land in the 1830s in England there is a chance that they were involved in the Swing Riots.  These started in the Elham Valley in Kent and quickly spread amongst the rural workers of the south and East Anglia.  The unrest was caused by a number of reasons – machinery taking jobs from men, farmers offering lower wages, payment of tithes to the Church of England whether or not you were a member.  Threatening letters were sent to those who were considered in a position to resolve the situation signed by “Captain Swing” who was fictitious.  If the warning was ignored it was followed by destruction of threshing machines, their engines, attacks on workhouses and tithe barns and later turned to burning hay ricks and other arsonist attacks.

If caught, the rioters faced imprisonment, transportation or execution.  Of the 2000 (approx.) rioters who were caught 252 were sentenced to death (only 19 were hanged), 644 imprisoned and 481 transported.


There is a brief article on-line about the riots at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots
or http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ruralife/swing.htm

In the 1990s Jill Chambers wrote a series of books about the Swing Riots looking at individual counties and how the riots effected the population of that particular county etc.  These books are well researched including information on all aspects of the “riots” for instance each person charged is listed with the charge, age, sentence and 1841 census transcription (if found).  Events in the county are diarised, trial transcripts, claims for rewards and so it goes on.

Auckland Libraries holds Jill’s books for Kent, Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Hampshire as well as Michael Holland’s book Swing Unmasked: the agricultural riots of 1830 to 1832 and their wider implications which is available in print (reference copy and one borrowable copy) and CD.

You may find a family member who was involved in this important event in English history but even if they were not caught they may have participated and these books give you an insight into life for rural workers at a tumultuous time in history.

Marie
Central Research Centre

Brett’s Colonists’ Guide and Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge was first published in 1883. All information that could possibly be needed for the new settler to New Zealand was covered in this book. From how to keep bees, shoeing horses, making a will and treating sore nipples, to recipes for Jugged Hare and Christmas cake, the breadth of tips and tricks to living in the colonies is wide and variable.

Of the many different and fascinating chapters, one I particularly like is called Cottages for Settlers. The chapter is introduced with, “A large proportion of the country settlers of New Zealand are compelled, by the exigencies of their location, to become their own architects…” In the following pages “three designs of convenient cottages, of very simple construction, with specifications of the sizes and quantity of timber required to complete them…” are provided, with illustrations. Below is an example of one of these designs.

Friends of mine moved in to their new house recently, one of those established Ponsonby villas which has been done up with a garage put in. It has the same bones of its early 1900s self but with far less land than it would have originally been on.

It is in St Mary’s Road and it was an interesting exercise to explore the Auckland Council’s Archive to see if the property was on its City of Auckland’s 1908 map.

A simple google of Auckland Council Archives takes you straight to their home page and clicking on  Search the Archives takes you to the link to the map.

There are two different ways to search the City of Auckland’s 1908 map. One is by browsing; the other is by doing a keyword search. Using the keyword search we typed in St Mary's Road and up came the portion of the map with that particular street in it.

Once you have enlarged the map you will notice the blue pins.


My friend’s house on St Mary's Road has a blue pin, which we clicked on. This went straight to the 1908/1909 valuation record for the property.

The Auckland City Council Valuation Roll Database 1908-1909 contains partial transcriptions of entries from the validation rolls and gives the names, addresses, occupations, property and legal descriptions etc. It gives the properties original street number with annotations added later to depict changes to buildings, streets, street names, etc. up to at least 1918/1919 and even 1923 for some parts of the city and incorporated into the map. It also shows the subsequent numbering of a property.

You can also browse the map. Browsing is on the index sheet of the 1908 map. Each populated grid square represents a sheet of the map. Moving your mouse over the grid highlights a section of the map and clicking on it takes you straight into the map on the database. Aside from the location of a property the map highlights the location and position of streets, footpaths, tramways, post and telegraph fixtures etc throughout the city as it was in 1908.


The City of Auckland 1908 map, whether you have connections to that part of Auckland or not, is a wonderful resource to search just out of interest to see the Auckland of over 100 years ago.


Bridget

Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, 31-68043.

A brief history of Mother's Day

Today is a special day to recognise and celebrate the women who raised us. Many countries around the world, including New Zealand, have adopted the Mother's Day celebration based on the North American origin of the holiday, with roots in the American civil war.

There are two histories associated with the origin of celebrating mothers, despite occurring several decades apart, both were in response to conditions resulting from war. The origin of Mother's day stemmed as a anti-war movement, and its reason for existence was commemorative rather than celebratory. 


Karen

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

We were especially chuffed to see that we'd made "Inside History's Hall of Fame" - as being one of only four blogs to have made this list three years in a row!

And what good company we are in (as always!)

Thank you so much to you readers who we know read our posts however often we publish!

And to Jill Ball (GeniAus) and Inside History magazine for selecting Kintalk - we're very grateful!

Our congratulations to our NZ industry colleagues Te Ara and The Hocken for making this year's Top 50 list too!

Happy blogging!

Seonaid

www.nzmusicmonth.co.nz

May is New Zealand Music Month!

This is part one of  a series of blog posts during May to celebrate New Zealand Music Month. Each week it will highlight Auckland Libraries heritage resources relating to New Zealand music, and its talented musicians, across all genres. So, if you have a "muso" in your family's history and are looking for information on them, these resources might just help you with your search.
Gareeb Stephen Shalfoon (1904-1953), "Epi"- a nickname from his family, was a jazzer who initially played piano but he taught himself how to play clarinet and saxophone  because he said at that time it was easier to hire a pianist than horn players. In 1924 he put together a band called the Melody Boys who went on to make New Zealand's first jazz recording. It eventually became a family affair - his daughter Reo, a very talented and popular singer in her own right, frequently performed with the band.

Epi Shalfoon and the Melody Boys, Filmcraft, 1930. Image from the Film Archive.

Sadly, Epi died at the young age of 48. He collapsed while dancing with his daughter at his favourite music venue, the Crystal Palace Ballroom.

In the lead up to ANZAC Day, an intriguing selection of books related to both world wars have come on to our shelves here in the Central Auckland Research Centre.

In particular,  I've been drawn to books written about women and their roles in the war, and one such role in particular. An estimated one and a half million women took part, it was highly secretive and every day  they faced the threat of injury or even death – the job of making the ammunition.
“Bomb Girls,” subtitled, “Britain’s Secret Army: The Munitions Army of World War II” relates the real life stories of these girls and women, called up to the munitions factories during the labour shortage. The work was dirty and boring, the hours long. Because the factories were away from towns in the countryside, the girls were often forced to go miles away from home to live in hostels or lodge with strangers. But most of all, the work was dangerous. One woman recounts working on the production line with the bomb detonators, “picking up the detonator – half the size of an aspirin tablet –   with a pair of tweezers one tiny mistake, the slip of a hand, could be fatal. And if the munitions were to leave the factory incorrectly assembled, the consequences for the front line troops could be fatal, too.” Another relates working in what she called “nitrates” – soaking cotton in pans of nitric acid. “They kept a big barrel of water in the shed. This was because of the acid in case someone got badly burned. If that happened they had to throw themselves in to it to save their skin. But usually the acid just splashed you in the face and you’d have to run like bill-o to get the stuff on to your face to calm it down.”

And of course there was living with the day-to-day threat of being bombed by the Luftwaffe.  The Swynnerton, Staffordshire factory, for example, was targeted several times by the Nazis, albeit unsuccessfully.

Photograph from Bomb Girls, (c) Getty Images

Besides the fascinating stories, there are photos of the women at work. There’s Queen Elizabeth and King George at an ammunitions factory which must have given a much welcome morale boost to the workers, and there are photos of the girls and women themselves working with bombs and bullets.  Of added interest, the final chapter lists the munitions factories with detail, how long they operated, and what they produced.

Bomb Girls is by Jacky Hyams and there are borrowable copies at Auckland Libraries.

The UK family history magazine “Your Family History” was rebranded late last year as Discovery Your History and yippee, we have a subscription to it. Whereas “Your Family History” was more dedicated to genealogy, the new publication promotes itself as “Ancestors, Heritage, Memories.” Even just flicking through a couple of issues (namely the late arriving issues of September and October) shows that there is going to be some great browsing material over the coming months.

The issues are packed with treats, such as an article on the New Zealander Archie McIndoe, who pioneered plastic surgery in World war two – the article focuses on the town of East Grimstead, West Sussex, where his patients, the ‘guinea pigs” lived. (He is held in such esteem in the town they are going to unveil a statue of him there this year.)

January 2014 issue

There’s an article on the London Underground – it turned 150 last year – and also on the subject of  travel, a lively piece on The Perils of Travel in Jane Austen’s day and how this most beloved author may have travelled –  she apparently got around England far more than most women did of the time.

Food – oh my gosh, who can possibly go past an article on food – especially an article on biscuits, with an interesting 1854 recipe for a “brown digestive” from the digestion-obsessed Victorian era. Not sure I’m game enough to try that one, even if my British ancestors may have enjoyed them.

But one of the most fascinating articles is on Port Sunlight in Merseyside, North West England  – the “industrial garden village” created by William Lever (the inventor, with his brother Darcy, of Sunlight soap). William wanted to create a beautiful village for his employees to live in, with Arts & Crafts styled houses, welfare provision, and facilities like a training college -and thus he founded the village of Port Sunlight. Last year Port Sunlight celebrated 125 years – ¾ of the properties are now privately owned, although almost all buildings are “listed” and the village is a conservation area managed by a trust set up by Unilever. Fascinating!

If you’re in the research centre, do take a look at publications like “Discover Your History” – some of these magazines are not available as borrowable copies, but they are jam packed with information about things British - and entertaining to boot.

Joanne

We've recently purchased a series of educational resources for children, called Branching Out.

They are US produced lessons plans by Jennifer Holik, broken into books with ages groups:
Branching out : genealogy for 1st-3rd grade students;  Branching out : genealogy for 4th-8th grade students ; and Branching out : genealogy for high school students.

Each age group contains 30 lesson plans; and works through the mechanics of step-by-step how to research your family history in an age appropriate way.

This is an exciting new addition to the Central Auckland Research Centre.

We often get children and teens on school visits come into the Research Centre. Family history is often introduced to children via the school curriculum in Year 4 and then later around Year 10; although some schools also do it in other years.


 Getting children interested in family history has fantastic results in terms of teaching them the concept of "history" and also teaching them how to research. It allows them to identify with history in a highly personal way, through their own families.

They learn valuable information seeking skills, how to use different resources, and how to cite their sources.

When they come into our Research Centre, they don't just learn to use our online databases and subscription websites. They learn about microfiche and microfilm; heritage newspapers; and using books and CD-Roms.

We have many other resources to help as well.

We try to teach them to think laterally.

Some of these schools treat family history as a year long project, with a fantastic scrapbook at the end of it.

My plan is to take these resources and adapt them for New Zealand.

I'd love to work more collaboratively with schools, raising awareness of how much we can help them.

And I am also considering developing a school holiday programme.

I think using Family History is a great way to teaching kids how to research and how to use their Library.

If you think your school would be interested, let them know and tell them to give me a call! The best way for us to help classes, if they ring and arrange a suitable time to come in.

Meanwhile, have a look at the photos on our Facebook page. Our wonderful displays team has created a display for Family History Month (August) called Family History for Teens and Children.

Seonaid