Death certificates and obituaries can tell us more about our family. We can find out about our ancestors medical history and we may find out about the lives of our ancestors but it's important to remember that the person with the first hand knowledge is not the one giving the information. Researching using records of death Newspaper Death and Funeral Notices and Obituaries When you know the date of death it is worth searching the newspapers to see if there is a death notice and/or a funeral notice. These may give you details about other family members or where the person lived. In some of the earlier newspapers the death notices are found in a different area to the funeral...
Jason's male ancestors seem to have four main professions: Out at Sea, Working with Wood, Working on the Railways or on the Land.What did your ancestors do? All in a Day’s Work Tracing an Occupation You may have already known about an ancestor’s occupation or maybe you have discovered it as you have been researching. Government Employees If your ancestor worked for the government, then records should be held by Archives New Zealand (as keeper of the Governments Memory). There are a number of guides to help you with your research that can be found on their website: http://archives.govt.nz/resources/research-resources There are also several older publications that are a guide to some of the archives holdings. These can be found at Christchurch City...
Some of Jason's ancestors made the newspaper more often than others. But you don't need to be rich or famous to make the news and sometimes it's just the everyday things that add so much to your family history. Extra, Extra, Read All About It Researching in Newspapers Newspapers are great sources for adding flesh to the skeleton of your family tree. The National Library of New Zealand has a digitised collection of 19th and 20th century newspapers available at Papers Past: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ These have been scanned and OCR’d. That means that you can search for specific words in the newspapers. The technology isn’t perfect though and sometimes the software has difficulty with blurry newspaper print, so be prepared to try...
Jason's maternal side of the family has a long history in Christchurch and Canterbury. The earliest marriage we could find was in 1856 in Lyttelton. Imagine what Lyttelton looked like then. The Bones Part 2 Church Records - Baptisms, Marriages & Burial's Baptism’s, Marriages and Burials give us more information about our ancestors and in particular what religion they may have been. We’re really lucky in Christchurch as the Christchurch Library in Manchester Street has the Canterbury Church Register collection. This is a card index to baptisms, marriages and burials in Canterbury. From the index cards you can then consult a book of transcriptions of the parish registers put together by volunteers from the New Zealand Society of Genealogists...
The skeleton of a family tree is the Birth, Death and Marriage of our ancestors and it's important to prove each branch of the tree. For Jason's family tree we started with his grandparent’s marriage certificates. From these we found out more about his grandparents and also the name of their parents.Keep reading to find out how you can get started with your Family History. The Bones - Part 1 Civil Registration - Births, Deaths and Marriages New Zealand Births, Deaths and Marriages started being registered in 1848 and became compulsory in 1856 for European births, deaths and marriages. It was compulsory for Māori marriages from 1911 and births and deaths from 1913. The other key dates are 1876 for births and...
