Our filing cabinets in the Research Centre are real treasure chests, filled with microfiche, microfilm and CDs and DVDs.

Photograph of the 'S S Viti' of the Tasman Shipping Company Ltd (Captain Clough Blair)Heritage Images, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 34-T284

Family History involves a great deal of detective work which is both enjoyable and frustrating.

One tends to examine documents for the tiniest details and then put them to one side or, if you are really serious about your family research, file them away in the relevant family file.  Every so often they are pulled out to examine again and a real gem that hasn’t been noted previously may emerge.

Auckland Libraries have the most amazing Digital Library which includes library subscriptions to sites that I intend to personally subscribe to just as soon as I win lotto.  The websites that I use most often in the Digital Library are Ancestry and Findmypast but there are many others to be enjoyed.

In my search for Richard George Collins’ immigration to New Zealand circa 1880, several digital databases have provided the evidence I need to back up my hunches.

Long ago I downloaded a passenger list from Findmypast which I thought could possibly be “my” Richard:

Although the age was correct there were a couple of problems. Richard was never known as “Richard Collins” - from babyhood he had used his second name, George, as his given name.

The other problem was that the ship sailed a week after George’s wedding day and no wife was listed on the passenger list although it was clear from other records that she was in New Zealand at the end of that year.

So I filed away the passenger list because there was no conclusive proof that Richard Collins (with no second name recorded) travelling 3rd class from Plymouth England to Sydney Australia on the Chimborazo in January 1880 was my Richard George Collins.  Sigh.

Sometime later I thought it might be a good plan to see if there was anything about my man in Papers Past.  This website has digitised New Zealand newspapers covering the years 1839-1945.

My search turned up an article in the Auckland Star on 5 October 1897 with an interesting title – “Railway Disaster, the inquest”.  To my surprise Richard George Collins was a witness to a fatal accident between a train and a horse drawn bus. But it was the evidence of another witness which made my mind race:

Where had I seen the name “Maples” before?  Ah yes, that document that I had tucked away a few years back; the Chimborazo passenger list of 1880.  Just who was that person just above Richard Collins on the list?  It was Alfred Maples, the father of the bystander in the report above and also the uncle of Richard George Collins.  All of a sudden a document which had been a “maybe” suddenly became a “definite”.

Alfred William Maples senior, George’s companion on the Chimborazo was escaping England and deserting his wife in order to start a new life and a new family in Australia.  Young George was travelling with his uncle.

I was surprised to discover, when I went into another database in our Digital Library that the steamer Chimborazo’s voyage had been shorter than I thought it would be.  The British Newspaper Archive  is another site which is accessible free in the library, containing newspapers from 1603 to the present day.

The Chimborazo had a dreadful trip starting out on 08 February and striking a storm on 10 February.  Many newspapers in England, Australia and even New Zealand reported the tragedy that occurred – this account is from the Staffordshire Sentinel on 11 February:

After undergoing a refit she set off on her journey again on 16 February. One can only imagine how much courage it took for the passengers to re-board.



The following is a clip from the wonderfully named “Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate”:

Regardless of its false start, the steamer arrived in Sydney on 04 April having dropped passengers in Melbourne on the way – a total of just 47 days.  Not bad for 1880!

The Auckland Libraries Digital Library gives you lots of different options for “fleshing out” your ancestors without the need for expensive subscriptions.  Why not have a look?

Deborah

I have recently been revising my talk on how to locate passenger lists for those of our ancestors who have just appeared in records here in New Zealand.

During the course of this preparation I have been using a variety of material available here in the library (Auckland Central) and one in particular I feel is worth mentioning as for a small work it is so full of useful information.

The booklet covers the period 1840-1970 and covers a lot of ground in its 64 pages.

On the back of the booklet Christine explains its purpose:

I am often asked how to find when an ancestor came to New Zealand. This set me off on an exploratory path a number of years ago putting together the different schemes, periods and times to find out just who the people were coming at the different time periods and why.
This booklet is designed to make readers think beyond the square to see what else was happening in the world that may have led people to New Zealand.

So, what sort of things are included?  The usual suspects of NZ Company, gold rushes, Waikato and Taranaki military settlers (Land Wars), assisted immigrants etc.  However, it is the sections on the settlement of particular places in New Zealand and schemes that brought immigrants to this country that are invaluable.  For instance, those who arrived due to the cotton famine in the UK, Small Farmers with Capital, Brogden’s Navvies, Moravian Settlement, Sedgwick Boys just to name a few.

I was particularly interested to read about Brogden’s Navvies. I now think this may be how relatives of my 2x Great Grandfather arrived and this has given me food for thought about further possible records to explore.

The booklet is indexed with a bibliography of material additional to those mentioned in the text.

Anybody who is interested in immigration records into New Zealand should find something of interest in this short work.  Perhaps worth considering as a Christmas present for the family historian in your family?

Migration to New Zealand: a guide for family history researchers by Christine Clement (published by Unlock the past, 2014, Australia)

Marie 

Family History Month is an Australasian event that runs throughout August each year and consists of talks, seminars and workshops on the subject of family history research and genealogy.

For many years the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations ( AFFHO), New Zealand Society of Genealogists (NZSG) and affiliated family history societies have celebrated family history.

Its a great way of showcasing family history and getting people involved.

This is the fourth year that Auckland Libraries have participated with events that are run throughout the region.


The Speaker Series is a month-long season of family history talks presented by library specialists and held at libraries all over Auckland. 

This year, there are 23 topics, held at 34 different libraries, making a total of 122 events region-wide throughout Auckland!

Find the talk you're interested in below, go to our website and see which date and location suits you best. 

Be sure to contact the host library and book your place for any that interest you! All sessions run for one hour unless otherwise stated.

Morris family group. c1941. Frank Morris Collection West Auckland Research Centre FMO-0729-00027-G

• Auckland Libraries family history eResources;
• Beginners guide to Ancestry;
• Beginners guide to FindMyPast; 
• Beginning your family history;
• Brick walls: tips and tricks to help solve your family history puzzle; 
• British Newspaper Archive; 
• Captives of the Kaiser: Researching Prisoners of War during the First World War;
• Doing family history: a journey to Matakana; 
• Family history roadshow; 
• Hospital records; 
• Military: The use of the official histories; 
• Newspapers and magazines for family history; 
• Pacific Island resources;
• Passenger lists and immigration; 
• Poor law; 
• Probate and wills; 
• Question and answer sessions; 
• Researching First World War records; 
• Researching your Irish ancestry; 
• Searching for your family on the internet; 
• Whakapapa storytime; 
• Whakapapa for adults; 
• Whakapapa for rangatahi (children)

Sometimes the journey depends on the strength of the passengers. Sir George Grey Special  Collections, AWNS-19230816-40-1.

The Knights depart London aboard Orvieto on 30 April 1927 bound for Australia:

UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 from Ancestry.com

Fremantle, Western Australia, Passenger Lists, 1897-1963 from Ancestry.com

New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973 from Family Search.

Happy searching!

Karen & Maureen

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.

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.