Heritage et AL

Raymond Leslie Baxter's photograph album came to Auckland Libraries as the result of a donation to the old Waitakere City Council. This donation might have been made after the tragic death of the album's owner, Miss Beverley Price, in the 1979 Air New Zealand crash at Mt Erebus in Antarctica. The photographs were taken by Beverley Price’s uncle, Raymond Leslie Baxter. They document his brief military career at Featherston Camp between July and December 1917. The details of this can be traced by consulting his army personnel file on Archway , Archives New Zealand’s system for government records. Baxter was a 28-year-old clerk from Newton who worked for the Auckland Education Board. In early 1917 he was called up and, along with his fellow recruits, transported by train to Featherston Camp in the South Wairarapa. His album includes three images of the troop train winding its way along the Wairarapa line across the Rimutaka Range. The Wairarapa Line railway across the Rimuta...

The Great War is over! Now 24,463 Auckland Weekly News Supplement photos for the period August 1914 to December 1918 have been more fully described so that they can be searched by description and subject. This means they will be more searchable and useful for librarians, social and family historians and genealogists. The photos cover that period’s social, political and military history from a New Zealand perspective. While there is obviously a national emphasis, many photos reflect this country’s involvement with international events in an important period of New Zealand’s history. This can be seen in the following Trevor Lloyd cartoon from October 1914 demonstrates New Zealand’s loyal support for Britain as they face Germany’s massive armies of mangy curs invading Belgium. Ref: Trevor Lloyd for the Auckland Weekly News, "His master's voice", 22 October 1914, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19141022-47-2.

On Monday, 18 April 2016, I issued my annual Trans-Tasman Anzac Day Blog Challenge . It's where I invite people to submit their blogs, written from their research about family members who served in the wars. This year it was the centenary of the First Anzac Day. Our remembrance day that we share with our mates across the ditch. Attendances at commemorations were at a record high throughout New Zealand; and from what I have read, they were in Australia too. It's thought provoking to see so many children and young people taking part in the march, the ceremony, or just as part of the crowd. A large number wearing medals of grandparents or great-grandparents... What is it about Anzac Day that interests so many young people and motivates them to get up to the Dawn Parade, or the Citizens Ceremony a couple of hours later? Sitting at the bottom of the world, with images of war on the news on TV, maybe makes war seem more real - combined with the learning the children ge...

One of the websites I receive a newsletter from is Lost Cousins run by Peter Calver in the UK. While I don’t subscribe to his site I get the newsletter as I find this really useful in that he often announces when discounts are available for various sites or advises how to get more bang for your buck, informs of books of interest and of course events etc relating to the genealogical world. In his newsletter of 8 February 2016 he has provided a link to the database of Red Cross volunteers WWI (currently A-V; the rest is still to come). This is a wonderful database.  You enter either a full name or just a surname, there is also provision for including location/hospitals and role/duties.  Once you have entered the details you get a list of results (or not).  The image below is what the results look like (I have cropped other information out). You then click on the name of the person of interest (I only used a surname) and you get a transcript of the record as we...

The recent announcement that the " Britain, Merchant Seamen, 1918-1941 " record collection is available on Findmypast was welcomed by a number of people including myself. In a number of cases, they extend the " British Merchant Navy, First World War Medal Cards 1914-1925 "  and " England & Wales Merchant Navy Crew Lists 1861-1913 " record collections that Findmypast already hold. As well as the usual name, date and place of birth, there are additional identifying features like the discharge number and the identity certificate number which can assist in finding further records about your person of interest. The real gold is the physical descriptions of the individuals, along with a photograph for some - and the names of the ships that they served on! This card (front and back) is a "CR1" from The National Archive series BT364 gives the discharge number 1041304 and the registration number 460898. The discharge number followed the s...

Nearly two years ago, Findmypast announced that they had won the bid to work in partnership with the National Archives to digitise the 1939 Register for England and Wales . Many researchers hadn't heard of the Register before, but for those in the know, this was a huge bonus and would make a big difference to our research. Since then Findmypast have conserved, scanned, transcribed and digitised over 1.2 million pages from 7000 volumes representing over 41 million individual entries from over 2000 residences. Initially only available on a pay-per-view basis, the 1939 Register is now available to all annual Worldwide or United Kingdom collection subscribers.  Those that subscribe to the US, Australia and New Zealand, or Ireland collections will still have to pay per view - as will those who only subscribe on a month-to-month basis. What is the 1939 Register? The Register was a snap census taken on 2 9 September 1939 at the start of Second World War to be used to issue ide...

We've had a sudden release of family history videos published to our YouTube channel - packed full of loads of tips! New online: Colleen Fitzpatrick: The "Unknown Child" of the Titanic - identified? 20 April 2015 Of the 328 bodies recovered by the salvage operation of the SS Titanic, just one was that of a child. His identity was unknown for nearly a century until 2002, when Dr. Alan Ruffman and Dr. Ryan Parr announced that they had identified the remains of the "Unknown Child". But was this identification correct? Hear how we resolved the controversy so that the Unknown Child of the Titanic was unknown no longer. Exploring Online Cenotaph with Victoria Passau 15 April 2015 New Zealanders have served this country in many international conflicts. Online Cenotaph, created by Auckland War Memorial Museum, aims to commemorate the stories of these veterans. This session showcases the new Online Cenotaph and discusses how family members and private r...

The wonderful people from the Auckland War Memorial Museum delivered an Artefact Digitisation Unit (ADU) to the Central Auckland Research Centre . A what? I hear you say . . . . It is an awesome piece of technology that looks kind of like an ATM machine - a kiosk with a computer, touchscreen monitor and a camera. With its connectivity to the internet, it has direct access to the new Online Cenotaph . People can use the ADU to search the Online Cenotaph direct from the Research Centre, and contribute information about the person they are researching - this includes the ability to photograph documents and objects to upload to a subjects record. The Online Cenotaph itself has been completed re-designed and had been re-launched in January. There are more than 140,000 service personnel listed, and alots of new content has been added: approximately 2,000 new images from Auckland Libraries' Schmidt Collection of portraits  direct links with servicemen’s sketches, po...

On 29 April 1915 Prime Minister Massey announced in Wellington that four days earlier New Zealand troops had participated in the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Dardanelles. However actual photographs of military activities and living conditions at Gallipoli were sparse in the Auckland Weekly News Supplement until late July 1915. There were photographs of the naval warships trying to force a passage through the Dardanelles and bombarding the Turkish forts there. There was also the Roll of Honour; and its seemingly never-ending portraits of casualties must have alerted readers that something BIG was happening. But either distance, censorship, early lack of official photographers or the simple fact that the troops  couldn't  easily get their films developed meant the  Auckland Weekly News could only gradually reveal the campaign to its readers as events unfolded. This little piece might shed some light on how Auckland Weekly News readers learned about life an...

Read all about it, military mileposts are 150 years old! In March 1863, a series of mileposts were installed at one mile intervals along a 22 mile stretch between Auckland’s CBD and the British Army Commissariat in Drury, mostly along Great South Road. They were placed to help Army contract drivers record their daily mileage and each triangular, totara post had the mile number chiseled into its two shorter faces. Automobile Association signs were added to many mileposts or their former locations in the 1960s and these have become popular features in their own right. Ref: 1-W92, Looking East from One Tree iIll with the Great South Road in the centre foreground, 1906, Sir George Grey Special Collections

My girls took part in the Anzac Day Citizens Parade once again - as Scouts this year. One of my daughter's is also now an Assistant Patrol Leader. They are growing up so fast. As usual, Anzac Day is a time for reflection. As a proud mother, I can relate a bit to the pride the mothers of the servicemen and women that fought, and get some inkling of the fear mixed with pride that the mothers must have felt when their children marched off to war. Mothers look at their children with such hope for the future. Once again, we have a great mix of New Zealand and Australian service people contributed from bloggers all over. First post is Shelley, my co-host from last year: Shelley of Twigs of Yore: Charles George French, returned serviceman , WWI Story told from his mother's perspective.  Annie: Private Arthur Edward Taylor , died of meningitis while at training camp 1916. War grave near Annie's family bach.  Merron: The McClintock brothers . WWI - James McClintock, d...