From starting the research as 100% Kiwi, if we look at Jason’s 16 great great grandparents, he is now 7/16 (44%) Scottish, 5/16 (31%) Irish and is 1/16 (6%) English, Welsh, Swedish and Danish. All of these ancestors made the journey to New Zealand to start new lives and are what make us who we are. Backwards & Forwards We’ve concentrated on going backwards, but it’s also good to trace the family forwards to find cousins who may have been the ones to inherit family stories and information. We often inherit photograph albums of unnamed photos. We know that they are family, but don’t know which family they are. By working together with other cousins there is the chance...
One of Jason's ancestors told us exactly when he was baptised and where in England he was from (in a newspaper article). But sometimes working out where our ancestors came from can take intensive research (Jason has a few of those too). Beyond Our Shores – Researching Outside of New Zealand Once you trace your ancestor to a place outside of New Zealand then your research does change a little. You will still be relying on “the bones” of birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial records to support your family tree, but you also have access to different types of records. One of the main record collections for United Kingdom research are the 1841-1911 censuses. These can be searched...
100 years ago today, Private James Gunn (Jason's Grandfather) joined the 2nd Battalion, Wellington Infantry Regiment (WIB) battalion in France towards the end of the Battle of the Somme. He was 26 years old. How to research your World War I Ancestor The personnel files of the New Zealander’s that served in World War I have been digitised and are available to download, at no cost, from: Archives New Zealand: archway.archives.govt.nz Discovering Anzacs website: http://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/ This website also includes Australian World War I records. Each page of the original file has been scanned and in some places you may find that there are multiple copies of documents, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed. Sometimes the writing can be hard to...
Imagine taking 94 days to travel from the UK to New Zealand. You had to endure the changes in temperature as you sailed from one hemisphere to the other. The food was preserved and the water not that fresh. All your washing was done in salt water and had to be dried inside if the weather outside wasn't good. If you didn't like some of the other passengers you were stuck with them for the entire voyage. Think about this the next time you fly overseas and make the same journey in a day. Immigration to New Zealand When you have identified the ancestor that arrived in New Zealand, then you need to try and work out when they arrived. If...
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...
