New Zealand Cemeteries Heritage Week

Ancestry.com have just added the New Zealand Cemetery Records, 1800-2007, to their website and to mark the occasion next week is New Zealand Cemeteries Heritage Week at Auckland Libraries.  The week involves a series of talks, seminars and ‘How-Tos’  by speakers from such places as the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, the Royal New Zealand Naval Museum, Ancestry.com and Auckland Libraries. All the talks will take place at the Whare Wānanga on the second floor of the Central Library. 

Ref: Henry Winkelmann, Showing views of St Stephens Chapel and cemetery at Judges Bay, 4 April 1916, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W563.

Auckland Libraries have created a variety of online resources about cemeteries. These include two major databases, one containing cemetery records from the Symonds Street and St Stephens cemeteries and the other includes Hillsborough, Onetangi, Otahuhu and Waikaraka and others. There is also an online exhibition showcasing maps of the Symonds Street Cemetery from a manuscript collection in the Sir George Grey Special Collections. If you are in Auckland and fancy a walking tour of the Symonds Street Cemetery we also have produced an audio guide, which you can download here.

Ref: Frank Douglas Mill, Purewa Cemetery from the air, 1930?, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, FDM-0484-G.

More detailed information about cemeteries in Auckland and also around New Zealand can be found under Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Family history section of our website.

For an in-depth look at the history of the Woodside Methodist Cemetery (pictured below), have a look at the essay Bruce Ringer wrote as part of the series Counties Manukau Essays.

Ref: Larry Purdy, Manukau City Council administration building, 11 May 1975, Photograph reproduced courtesy of Larry Purdy, South Auckland Research Centre, Footprints 01675.

For more images and transcriptions of headstones do take a look at the Tombstone Tuesday series over on our family history blog, Kintalk.

In addition to these online resources there are print copies of headstone transcriptions at all the Research Centres including transcriptions from cemeteries all around the country at the Central Auckland Research Centre.

Author: Andrew Henry