Heritage et AL

Soon after the start of the First World War, New Zealand’s Governor Lord Liverpool agreed to send New Zealand troops to capture the German wireless station in Samoa and occupy the German colony . New Zealand troops, supported by three New Zealand cruisers and three other Australian and French warships, took possession of German Samoa on 29th August 1914. Ref: Auckland Weekly News, The British occupation of Samoa, 29 August 1914, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19140917-42-1. Ref: Auckland Weekly News, The unopposed landing of the New Zealanders in Samoa, 7 September 1914, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19140917-43-1.

To mark Samoan Language week, we are featuring a great Samoan resource in our heritage collections whose existence was alerted to me by a sleuth-like colleague. We have a carbon copy typescript of the Samoa guardian from 26 May 1927 to 6 June 1929. Though this transcript finishes in June it provides a particularly valuable historical record of the two years leading up to the disastrous events of Black Saturday .  Image: Reinforcement for the Administration Police At Samoa ; The Departure From Auckland Last Saturday Morning.  Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19280426-38-03 The Samoa guardian came into Auckland Libraries collection through a donation from the estate of the Rev. Albert Bygrave Chappell on 25 January 1951 along with some of his other papers which are now part of our Manuscripts collection. The mystery in the provenance is how this ended up in the possession of Rev. Chappell in the first place and why did he have a carbon copy ...