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November 2014

Welcome

The purpose of this newsletter is to update you on upcoming events and share information with you about new services, resources and additions to our collections.

In this issue, we highlight one of the interesting items we have received over the past few months, introduce you to our new exhibition which commemorates the centenary of the First World War, reveal the research techniques we use to help determine the age of a property and give you an update on our volunteer indexing programme.

World War I Exhibition and Timeline

The First World War (1914–1918) was one of the most significant events of the 20th century, and had a deep and long lasting impact on New Zealand. This year marks 100 years since the beginning of the war and the start of a four-year global commemoration that will give New Zealanders the chance to remember the cost of war and pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Christmas Card 1914 - from The Mayor, Councillors and staff of the City of Auckland, showing flags of the allied nations

To commemorate the centenary of the First World War, Auckland Council Archives has developed an online exhibition and timeline featuring material from the Auckland Council Archives collections.

The exhibition focuses on council activities during and after the war, including involvement in relief funds, provisions for returned soldiers, commemorative events and the construction and placement of war memorials.

View the Auckland Council Archives World War I Exhibition

The timeline features excerpts from the official minute books of those local authorities in existence in the Auckland region during the First World War to provide an insight into how Auckland reacted and contributed to the war effort.  The timeline will be added to for each year of the commemorations.

View the Auckland Council Archives World War I Timeline

The City Board of Commissioners' Seal

One afternoon last April work at Archives’ central office on Lorne Street was pleasantly interrupted by an email from Australia. Lisa Frankel, a student in librarianship and corporate information management living in Tygalgah in New South Wales had bought an artefact at an auction that she felt rightly belonged in Auckland’s historical archives. At a tender centre among a box of New Zealand material such as magazines, tins, and key rings she had bought was, rather surprisingly, the ancient seal of the Auckland City Board of Commissioners. Council is indebted to Lisa for the generous gift of an early artefact of local government in Auckland during the first quarter century of European settlement.

 

The metal base of the City Board of Commissioners’ seal, showing slight copper oxidation and what may be fragments of dark sealing wax around the raised letters.

The seal is made of brass attached to a heavy polished quartz handle and is about 8.5 cm tall and 5.0 cm wide. It is now recorded in the Civic Gifts & Council Artefacts database as accession number 2014 19. No example of a printed impression from the seal has been found so far among the Board’s surviving records held in council’s archives. It was perhaps intended for use with sealing wax when the Board’s staff sealed outgoing letters.

The City Board of Commissioners was successor to the short-lived City Board of Works (established in 1862) and predecessor of Auckland City Council. It was first elected in 1862 and last met in 1871. The Board’s responsibilities included such staples of local government as streets, drainage, sewage, water, street lighting and nuisances. More on its history can be found in G W A Bush's Decently and in Order: The Government of the City of Auckland, 1840-1971 (1971). A number of the City Board of Commissioners’ records survive in archives, including three minute books (in series CBC 001) and two letter books (in series CBC 002). A few of its plans are incorporated in a large series of plans kept by Auckland City Council’s City Engineer’s Department after 1871 (series ACC 015).

Thanks to Archives’ volunteer John La Roche’s index work on the City Board of Commissioners’ minute books, two references were quickly found that seem likely to refer to the stamp in the minutes of a meeting held on 14 October 1863: 'The Chairman laid upon the Table a Seal which had been prepared for the Board' and a note of the issue of a ‘Cheque to J H Watt for seal of the City Board £5-12-0’ (Archives' ref.: CBC 001/1, pp.195, 199). The seal was expensive – the online Reserve Bank of New Zealand inflation calculator (www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/0135595.html) shows that £5 12 shillings in the final quarter of 1863 would purchase about $600 of goods or services at today’s prices. In December 1863 the Board’s foreman of works was paid 10 shillings per day so the seal would have cost more than his wages for ten days’ work.

 

Side view of the City Board of Commissioners’ seal showing the metal base and part of the quartz stone handle.

Checking in the NZ Card Index available through the Auckland Libraries' website, together with name searches on the Archives NZ website and the National Library's Papers Past website identified J H Watt as James Haldane Watt, an engraver, watchmaker and jeweller at Shortland Crescent (later Shortland Street). Records of the Department of Internal Affairs at Archives NZ in Wellington show that in 1848 he was paid to repair the Supreme Court seal.

Volunteer Indexing Programme

Auckland Council Archives celebrated National Volunteer Week during 15-21 June.  This year the theme for National Volunteer Week was "Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te tangata", which translates as "With your contribution and my contribution the people will live".  To celebrate and promote the work of our volunteers, we created a "Wordle" by asking our volunteers to submit three words to describe what they get out of volunteering or what volunteering means to them.  (For further information about "Wordles" see www.wordle.net).

This 'Wordle' illustrates the benefits of volunteering with Auckland Council Archives.

The indexing programme for much of this year has been focussed on World War I memorials.  The volunteer indexing team so far have created indexes for the following memorials:

These indexes are now available for searching on our website.

Besides the war related indexes, our volunteers have been working on other projects.  One of these projects is transcribing the Takapuna Borough Council building permit registers (1913-1950) which will enable both the Archives staff and the general public to search for historic permit information more easily.  Another ongoing project is the creation of an index for the Northcote Borough Council ratebooks which begin in 1910.  We have recently completed indexes for Waitemata County Council wine licenses 1915-1934 and the Papatoetoe Borough Council bicycle register 1936-1944 which will be made available online shortly.

Other projects currently underway include the Auckland City Council building calculation indexes, a 1915 petition for continuous Sunday evening trams, an Auckland City Council engineers letterbook 1897-1900 and Otahuhu Borough Council ratebooks 1873-1891.

In May we said goodbye to André, who returned to full-time work at Sky Television. André worked on many of the World War I indexes and his departure now means we have a volunteer position to fill.

We are looking to recruit another volunteer to our team at our central office on a Friday. Perhaps you have an interest in family history or historical documents and have some computer skills and time to offer Auckland Council Archives?  We provide an induction programme, plus ongoing training and support.  Initially, the work would involve checking completed transcriptions so that we can get more indexes online.  If you are interested in volunteering at Auckland Council Archives, please contact us at:  archives@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

How to Track the Age of a Property

The Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP) contains a provision preventing unconsented demolition of pre-1944 buildings in historic parts of Auckland which have a concentration of such buildings.

This has led to an increase in the number of home owners approaching the Auckland Council Archives North office to find out when their houses were built, especially if there is no record in the current property file.

So how do we at Auckland Council Archives North track a dwelling's age?

Our first step is to locate the property on the Auckland Council GIS viewer, then we take a shortcut by going to the QV.co.nz website which gives an approximate age. The benefit of this is that it narrows down the years of records to search and saves time.

Using the GIS map we compare the position of the property to our old maps to get the early property description. While we now use Lot and DP numbers, in the first half of the twentieth century properties were described as "3 of 84" or "5 of 13".

The maps can also be useful for very early buildings as they can show a footprint of a building on the property as shown in these early borough plans.

Once we have the property description we can then go to building permit records and search for the street and property description. Unfortunately there are some pages of our registers that have no street numbers or property descriptions. In this case we need the owner’s names at the time of building.

To get this we usually ask the customer to obtain an historic certificate of title although sometimes we are able to track the name ourselves through documents on the property file or valuation/rating records.

Occasionally we search the subdivision records to see when a property was formed. Like checking the QV website, this narrows down the period to search and sometimes the subdivision plans have footprints of houses like the early maps.

Here is a recent example of finding a building's age, "When was the dwelling built on 25 Blomfield Spa. The council electronic property file only goes back to 1965."

The GIS map (above) enabled us to compare and identify the property on a 1930 Takapuna Map. While the current description is Lot 22 DP 21013, on the 1930 map (below) the description was 22 of 31.

The QV website gave a date of 1945 for the dwelling – we now have a date to start looking from and a property description! Time to hit the permit registers. We searched the Takapuna Building Permit Register Vol 2 starting at 1946 and working back. On page 37 we found the following:

Permit No 2454  Date 3.9.1941 Owner Evans P, Builder Stokes H, Blomfield Spa For Dwelling Lot 22 of Pt 31 Value of Building  £1208

We were able to email the information to the customer and a copy to Records to update the electronic file.

In another enquiry recently we were unable to track down a building permit however we could suggest a year by going to the rates books. Look at the difference in rateable value between 1900/1901 and 1902/1903.

The increase from £2 to £125 value indicates that a dwelling was built in the previous year.

So what are the implications of having a dwelling built before 1944?  A resource consent may now be required before this pre-1944 building can be altered, demolished or removed. By requiring consent, Auckland Council has the opportunity to assess the heritage values of the building and whether demolition is appropriate or not.

Donations

Donations of former council records, publications, plans, photographs and memorabilia from the public and former staff are welcome. For more information, please email the Council Archives team at, archives@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Find out more

Phone              09 307 7792

Email                archives@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Website           www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/councilarchives

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