'Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-6097' Showing the headstone and grave of Rev Carl Sylvius Volkner CM, who was murdered on the 2nd March 1865 Read the story in PapersPast Brutal Murder of Rev. Mr. Volkner, Resident Church of England Missionary at Opitiki, Bay of Plenty

In the Central Auckland Research Centre, we have a collection of microfilm collectively called “Miscellaneous Films”. These are a series of films covering a variety of resources and have been grouped together in the Research Centre, just for the convenience of storage.

So, what sort of material can be found amongst this collection?

There is The diary of William Bambridge containing an account of his journey from England to New Zealand in 1841 which runs to two films.

William Bambridge was a school teacher who accompanied William Charles Cotton and Bishop Selwyn to the Te Waimate Mission. They arrived at the Bay of Islands on 20 June 1842 and he remained until December 1847.

Other items include:-

• Returns of blockhouses, redoubts and stockades in the North Island, 1869
• Index of microfilm of the source material of the "Story of early Dunedin"
• Annual reports, minute books and club photographs, 1946-1972 Eastern Suburbs Rugby Football Club
• Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey : papers, 1905-1923
• The joy remains : autobiography of Sister Margaret of the Cross
• St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society : records 1882-1972
• Development and education in the Cook Islands : a study of community and education in an emergent Pacific Islands Territory by W.G. Coppell

 The collection includes other diaries, papers of several people, including Joseph Banks. It is definitely something for those particularly interested in the early history of New Zealand to have a look at.

No doubt there are some gold nuggets hidden amongst the material that we are unaware of and you may be just the person to find it.

Marie Hickey 

The Central Auckland Research Centre has 13 new family history eBooks on CD-Rom about South Africa including:

Brothel, lunatic house and slave lodge – the building at the top of Cape Town’s Adderley Street’s many functions under British and Dutch rule are explored in this eBook. It also includes the register of the slave lodge census of 1714, and the death register of lodge slaves spanning 60 years.
This eBook documents British pioneers who made the Cape their home during the first British occupation 1795-1803, and the second occupation beginning in 1806 - after which the country remained a British Colony until the Union of South Africa came into being in 1910.
This first South African Jewish Year Book includes over 700 biographies as well as documenting many aspects of Jewish life such as The Jewish Gold Pioneers, United Hebrew schools, Jews of Griqualand West and Bloemfontein Jewry.


These eBooks come from online publishers Ancestry24, (no connection to Ancestrydotcom) who also have a very large amount of online South African genealogical records.


LR