Are you like me and have links to Oxfordshire?  Have you had a look at the libraries catalogue to see what resources we have for this county?  If not, you may be pleasantly surprised!

Apart from the usual suspects of parish register transcripts (whole county), monumental inscriptions, wills and census, what else do we have?

Kirtlington Park, Oxfordshire Sir George Grey Special  Collections, Auckland Libraries AWNS-19390104-40-1

Among the collection we have the following and there is something for everyone:

Alumni Oxonienses (Oxford University)
Banbury constables 1775-1925
Bastardy papers
Boat People of the Oxford Canal
Coroners Inquests 1820-37
Constabulary recruitment register 1857-1904 (includes some photographs)
Freemen of the City of Oxford 1663-1997
militia rolls
Oxford City Police Court minute book 1837-42
indexes to Poor Relief (Henley-on-Thames)
Probate records
Quarter Sessions 1687-1830
Victoria County history (these include information about flora, fauna, history, manors, occupations, churches etc)

"The People of …" series include transcriptions of many different records eg settlement records, early censuses, list of the poor, confirmations, poll books, etc.

All of the above are on the shelves/CD drawers in the Central Auckland Research Centre but there are other titles available throughout the library system such as Lark Rise to Candleford (good for getting a “feel” for life in rural Oxfordshire) and if you don’t feel like reading the book it is available on DVD.

Just a word of warning, some parishes which were in the ancient county of Oxfordshire are now in Berkshire – check Phillimore’s Atlas and Index of Parish Registers for pre-1974 boundaries.

Marie Hickey

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-RIC263 Showing the grave and headstone of Christopher Greenway and Herbert George Greenway in the Symonds Street Cemetery. The inscription reads: Sacred to the memory of Christopher Greenway who departed this life March 20th 1889 aged 70 years and in loving memory of Herbert George who departed this life September 27th 1871 aged 13 years and 5 months. Beloved youngest son of Christopher and Helen Greenway his wife. 'His will be done'

A while back a colleague from a sister research centre contacted us to see if we had a copy of the Jury List published in the Southern Cross issue of 16th February 1858.  Their customer was searching for an ancestor mentioned on that list, and they had found the issue on microfilm, but there was a problem. The jury list on the microfilm was incomplete. The list began on page three and went over to page four only to have the words at the bottom of the page read “For continuation see supplement.”

Supplement? What supplement? There was no supplement.

Did we have a supplement on our microfilm?

So I checked our copy and wouldn’t you know it, just like my colleague, there was no supplement. No separate publication at the end of the roll – nothing. For some reason, it had failed to be copied during the microfilming process many moons ago.

However. We did have the print copies of the Southern Cross in our news stack, those precious 150 year old originals, accessible only via Sir George Grey Special Collections. But did this original have the missing supplement?

Silence in the Court Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries,  973-39

Yes, it sure did, and they were, with some difficulty I gather, able to scan a copy of the complete jury list from the original to send to the customer and also provide us with a copy to bind and add to our collection on the open shelves, located at 2 NZL COU AKD. A nice treasure to have here in the Central Auckland Research Centre.

As a bit of background on jury lists, each year in New Zealand the police magistrate in a district would come up with a list of men, aged between 21 and 60,  who could serve on jury. These lists were published in newspapers such as the Southern Cross and listed three things; name, occupation and street or suburb.
The Southern Cross as it was known from 1843 to 1862 was a weekly paper which became daily in 1862 – hence the change of name then to Daily Southern Cross. It merged with the NZ Herald in 1876.