Trans-Tasman ANZAC Day Blog Challenge

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Anzac poppiesIt started with Shelley from Twigs of Yoreissuing a blog challenge for Australian researchers in celebration of Australia Day.

Here at the Central Auckland Research Centre at Auckland Libraries, we loved the idea and thought that we could be just as successful with a blog challenge for Waitangi Day. We had loads of international response, with people blogging about their New Zealand early settler ancestor from as far away as UK and the US and as close as NZ and Australia!

This time, it is a joint challenge with our Digger mates from across the Ditch.

Australians and New Zealanders know ANZAC Day – 25 April – as a national day of remembrance for Australian and New Zealanders who died at war.

Do you have an Australian or New Zealander in your family tree who was killed in military operations? We’d like to hear about not only their sacrifice, but the way their loss shaped their family history.

To participate:

  • Write a blog post about an Australian or New Zealander serviceman or woman’s family, and the impact war had on their family history
  • Post a comment with the URL on the Auckland Research Centre’s Facebook page under discussions or on the relevant post on the Twigs of Yore blog.
  • Publish your post by 25 April 2011.


After Anzac Day, all submissions will be listed in a summary posting onAuckland Libraries’ Kintalk blog and also Twigs of Yore blog.

Just to get you started, recommended resources for New Zealand and Australian research, see the Auckland Libraries Digital Resources.


Access great online resources:

Coming Home virtual exhibition
The virtual exhibition consists of "albums" containing photos/images and documents. Virtual albums entitled "Gallipoli", "Lest We Forget", "New Zealand Maori Battalion", "Peace", "Postcards" and "Returned Services Association". Also has a portal for searching content nationwide from organizations such as libraries, archives, museums and galleries, including Auckland Libraries. Courtesy DigitalNZ.
Index Auckland and New Zealand Card Index
For references to articles and other resources regarding WWI and WWII.

Manuscripts Online
For diaries, letters, postcards and albums

And Papers Past

Within the library catalogue: Auckland Libraries

Searching using WWI or WWII etc will return you wonderful results of holdings throughout the whole of Auckland Libraries, which you can narrow down by location by using the "select location" dropdown menu on the right of screen.

For example, available in all three Research Centres:- Central, South (Manukau) and North-West (Waitakere) are gems such as:
* New Zealand Expeditionary Force casualties, WWI. Books I to XIV, 15 Aug. 1914 to 6 Jan. 1919and you’ll also find Australian resources in the Central Auckland Research Centre; for example:
* Book of remembrance of the University of Sydney in the Great War 1914-1918* Index to news items and obituaries of WWI servicemen and women in the Tasmanian weekly magazines
For other sites, try looking at the Auckland War Memorial Museum ; theAustralian War Memorial site and the National Archives of Australia, or look further using the resources listed on Cora Num’s website. 

Guest post: The New Zealand Company

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Guest contributor: Paul Veart

Over the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of researching the New Zealand Company for a presentation as part of Auckland Libraries’ lunchtime talk series.

When I first began looking at the New Zealand Company I must admit I didn’t quite realise what I’d be in for, expecting just a brief search through emigration records. Once I began, however, I quickly got sucked into a world of manipulative political dealings, life-and-death journeys and murky contracts – and that was just trying to book a microfilm reader!

Of course there are actually a large number of freely available resources on the New Zealand Company, including an excellent set of microfilms at the Central Auckland Research Centre, covering everything from emigrants’ original applications for free passage to letters of reference and land purchases. However, the resource I found most interesting was something different…

After several failed attempts as far back as the 1820s, the New Zealand Company was founded in England in 1839 with the aim of promoting, and financially benefitting from, the colonisation of New Zealand. The company’s principles were devised by a former diplomat, hypnotist and convicted kidnapper, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, while he was serving a three year jail term in Newgate Prison. The New Zealand Company went on to found settlements across the country, including Wellington,Nelson and Petre/Wanganui/Whanganui, as well as being involved in the establishment of New Plymouth, Dunedin and Christchurch.

Of the many excellent resources on the history of these settlements, the ones I found most insightful were not passenger lists or recruiting posters (although these are both worth investigating) but a series of maps, freely available on the Te Ara website.

Included is the 1840 map of Wellington on its original site, complete with its own Covent Garden and Billingsgate Fish Market, all on the banks of the Hutt River. There is also the first map of Wellington as we know it today. The ruler-straight roads can be seen running up the sides of Wellington’s notorious hills and if ever you’ve laboured up a particularly steep street in the country’s capital or have struggled to find a car park on ground flat enough that your handbrake will hold, you now know who to blame: the New Zealand Company’s first Surveyor General and author of the map, William Mein Smith. This online plan also lets you investigate every original section, and the order in which they were chosen – from lot 215, a prime waterfront location (at least until the land reclamations) to lot 524, just above the cemetery and chosen 993rd!

Te Ara has these maps not only for Wellington but also several other New Zealand Company settlements. The format allows you to zoom in to great levels of detail and appreciate them not only as genealogical and historical tools, but as works of art in their own right.

Paul Veart

Waitangi Day Blog Challenge wrap-up!

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We put out a challenge to our family history community in celebration of Waitangi Day . . .
The challenge was to:

Write about:
  • How different is our life from that of your early NZ ancestors? (settler or Maori)
  • What stories can you tell us about their lives?
or
  • If you are first generation New Zealander or maybe a new Kiwi, perhaps you might like to tell us of your first impressions of New Zealand, and your experiences of settling in here; and how Kiwi traditions and culture differs from your own.
It followed the inspirational example led by our friends across the Tasman when Shelley of Twigs of Yore sent out an Australia Day blog challenge.

We were very pleased with the result, which saw eleven different people post their blogs. Some people posted about more than one of their ancestors!

The quality of the research was great, and people are obviously very passionate about their ancestors.

What impressed us the most was the interest that this raised.

Looking at the statistics of our Facebook page, we noted that we had over 1900 people internationally view our Waitangi Blog discussions page! That’s a whole lot of interest.

And our contributors were also international: from the UK, US and Australia, as well as from New Zealand.

Certainly makes us motivated to wanting to issue a similar challenge again!

Thank you to our wonderful contributors:
Lyn of Genealogy New Zealand: Ned Devine “Cabbage Tree Ned”
Carole of Carole’s Canvas: Joseph CRAIG
Julie of Anglers Rest: Anne MATTHEWS (nee LASSETER)
Sharon of The Tree of Me: Charles Thomas SEABROOK
Caroline of Caro’s Family Chronicles: Thomas BLUETT
Lee of Lineagekeeper: Charles Hook Gordon LOGIE
Patsy posted hers about Samuel STONE, Henry ELLMERS and Robert HAMLETT direct to the Facebook discussion board on our page, and
Lyn posted an extra two contributions about Louis HAUPOIS and Te Mauri MEIHANA aka Molly MASON straight to the board also.
While there, you might want to “LIKE” our page to keep updated on our news and events,
or you might want to sign up for our Library eNewsletter, to be updated of all Auckland Library events
http://www.nextreads.com/join.aspx?SID=a5e037df-65d9-4a38-9f1e-3409680476a4

Happy hunting
Seonaid

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