Treasure Chest Thursday: The Treasury, Thames

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Recently, Marie and I travelled down to Thames for the biennial Thames Family History Expo.

 When we travel away like this, we usually try to make best use of time and visit other libraries, museums or archives to see what they have.

The Treasury, The Coromandel Heritage Trust

 What a great opportunity for us then, to go and visit The Treasury?

 The Coromandel Heritage Trust was founded in 2003 to establish the Treasury. In 2004 The Treasury was opened in the old Carnegie Free Library.

 In March 2014, a new extension was built adjacent - and the new archive was opened. 

 We were very fortunate to be given a guided tour of the both interconnected buildings, and their resources.



The Treasury Archives

 The archive building is fitted out with shelving, gas fire suppression system and temperature controlled rooms. There are loads of manuscripts and photographs and other treasures stored and awaiting for the Trust to catalogue and put away in their new archive facilities.


Time capsule in the Archive Room
There is also a "time capsule" waiting to be opened in 100 years time.

In the Reading Room, there were many shelves filled with resources and research related to people from Thames and surrounding districts.
Some of the resources on the
Reading Room shelves at the Treasury

If you have links to the Thames or Coromandel region, or even New Zealand mining links, I would definitely recommend a visit down there to make use of their research facilities.

Happy hunting

Seonaid

 

Location: 44 Lorne Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand

Talented Tuesday: NZ Music Month #4

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www.nzmusicmonth.co.nz
This is the last week of New Zealand Music Month and the final post in this series on resources to help you find out more about your musical ancestors.

Numerous heritage collections focus on New Zealand music including the Music Programme Collection, Music in Auckland scrapbooks (1890-1930), and the New Zealand Music scrapbooks (1960-1995). All of the materials are held at Sir George Grey Special Collections located at the Central Library.

To find information held in these music scrapbooks, use the Index Auckland database doing a keyword and/or name search. Each record provides you with a description of the folder's contents and the reference number for locating the item at Sir George Grey Special Collections.

Alfred Francis Hill (1870-1960), a gifted violinst ... is also acknowledged as "the first fully professional New Zealand composer" according to the Oxford History of New Zealand Music.

Mr Alfred Hill, composer. 1905.
Sir George Grey Special Collections
 AWNS-19050622-7-1
One of Hill's most important works is Hinemoa (1896), which was based on a traditional Maori legend. 

Music in Auckland Scrapbook, v.2, 1890-1930.
Sir George Grey Special Collections.

"It was the first European work to set Māori melodies on a traditional western harmonic context." The piece was given positive praise in both the music and Māori communities.


By searching Index Auckland with Alfred Hill's name, a performance review on of The Exhibition Orchestra and a 1904 review of the first concert by "the recently formed" Auckland Orchestral Society were found.

Index Auckland, Record ID 69996.
Index Auckland, Record ID 69886.

Another excellent database that has material  from Special Collections is the Ephemera Index. For those of you not familiar with the word ephemera,  it is a term for printed material originally intended to have a limited life-span, such as programmes,  posters, tickets, flyers and cards - which are essentially the typical items that are associated with musical events.

A quick keyword search for Hinemoa brought up a record for a "Grand Miscellaneous Programme", the folder contents state it includes the cantata Hinemoa by Alfred Hill.

For more information on the heritage music collection as well as all the unique material held in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, click here.

Good luck with finding your family's musicians.

Karen

Location: 44 Lorne Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand

Motivation Monday: Talofa lava - Samoan Family History Resources

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This week is Samoan language week and the theme for 2014 is Taofi mau i au measina: Hold fast to your treasures.

 Here in the Central Auckland Research Centre, we do indeed hold fast to our treasures and what better motivation can you have to begin researching your Samoan family history research?

 If you search our classic catalogue using the "call number" 3 SAM you will see have a large Samoan family history collection, consisting largely of microfilm - filled with information for the researcher.

Our resources for Samoa include what was formerly Western Samoa and also American Samoa.

 The microfilms contain registers starting from around1852 and some going right up till 1993, with titles such as:



 As well as births, deaths and marriages the records also cover wills and probates, genealogies and pedigrees, immigration records, and published family histories.

 The records also cover Europeans as well as Samoans - and cover periods of German and British occupation, as well as New Zealand and American.

 So please look at our catalogue - "call number" 3 SAM - to see what we have, or else pop in and see our friendly research librarians on the second floor of Central Library.

 Happy hunting

 Seonaid

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