Heritage et AL

Today we are highlighting a couple of interesting items from our New Zealand Manuscripts collection: carbon paper manifold copying books. These two copying books show two of the most common uses for the technology.  The first of these is a letter book of a practising lawyer and contains business records as well as personal correspondence, while the second is a letter book as well as a diary. Ref: James Pirie's diary, Front endpaper detail, 1870s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries,  NZMS 427.

Henry Winkelmann (1860-1931) was one of the most talented photographers operating in New Zealand at the beginning of the twentieth century. Henry tried several occupations before deciding, at the age of forty to earn a living from his camera. In 1878 he sailed to New Zealand following his elder brother, Charles, who had emigrated three years earlier. Winkelmann lived initially in Dunedin, before moving to Auckland in the early 1880s. Times were hard though and in 1881, unemployed and desperate for money, he embarked with a companion on an expedition to remote, uninhabited Jarvis Island (midway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands). The purpose was to claim the island for the merchant shipping company Henderson and Macfarlane, who were keen to exploit the commercial possibilities of guano (the phosphate-rich excrement of seabirds, prized as a fertilizer). The two men were supposed to stay on the island for three months in order to validate the claim. However, the resc...