Family History Month 2025

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

This month libraries and archives across the motu (country) will be hosting events and displays for Family History Month, including Tauranga, Rotorua and Whakatāne. For those searching online, Pae Korokī has some great resources to add social context and images to family stories.

You can search Pae Korokī by name, street, organisation, iwi and more. It is good to start broad e.g. just the surname, and then add more keywords depending on the results (the how to guides have some good search tips). You can browse through the results, or use the filters to refine your selection.

Some of the collections that will show in your results include:

Tauranga Photo News. Described by a librarian as 'the Instagram of that generation', between 1962 and 1970 Renwood Studios and other contractors would capture local events, celebrations, weddings, arts, theatre and sports events, and people at work for.  

Front cover of Tauranga Photo News No. 17, October 1963.

Although the covers were brightly covered the pages inside were black and white newsprint, now with a slight yellow tinge (print copies are viewable in the reference section at He Puna Manawa - Tauranga City Library). Gatherings of all sizes were shared, including these photos of Tauranga Rovers basketball team celebrating the end-of-season at Mrs M. Scott's Ōtūmoetai home.

Page 58 of Tauranga Photo News No. 17, October 1963.

For those looking for people photographed between February 1969 and September 1979, Tony A'Hern, local editor and photographer, donated a set of Photo News negatives. Logan Publishing Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Many of these weren't published and don't yet have names in the metadata. If you recognise anyone do let the Heritage & Research Team know.

Audience at Western Music, December 1969.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Logan Publishing, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty Photo News Collection Photo pn-5558

Gifford-Cross Photographic Collection is another wonderful source of high-quality images of local people, places and events. Donated by the owners of the Bay of Plenty Times in 1992, there is an ongoing project to share online the approximately 140,000 - 180,000 images.

Sometimes family research involves looking through lots of items to find the few that are of your family. The image below is one that there are no names associated with the photograph, but someone might recognise a parent or aunt or uncle or tīpuna.

Children on board Japanese ship, July 1966.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo gcc-14892

You might also see relations in our Audio visual  collections. Particularly in footage of city events captured by local film-makers such as Norman Blackie, Roy Pilkington and Jack and Rene Fenn. Maybe someone in your family was on an Orange Festival float or competing in an apple eating contest in the 1960s and 70s, or at the opening of Taurua Marae in Rotoiti (1960)?

Or perhaps you can hear their voice sharing memories in an early 2000s oral history recording, a project by Max Avery,  Jinty Rorke  and others.

The archive collections are a treasure trove, containing all sorts of items and ephemera, including family scrapbooks, like Ms 102, compiled by Annette Tootell, whose mother Gertrude Hunt, was the accompanist for renown singer Te Rangi Pai (Fanny Rose Porter, Poata):

Page 1 from the scrapbook of photographs and copies of newspaper articles about Te Rangi Pai's career as a singer.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ms 102/3

Minute books from local organisations can contain comments from an ancestor, and a snaphot of their interests, hobbies and public service. They may test your manuscript reading skills, but like Papers Past, can quickly go from seemingly dry text to fascinating glimpses of societal values and conversations.

Snippet from the Tauranga Combined Māori Women's Welfare League discussion in November 1972 about possible sponsorship of a contestant for the Tauranga Orange Festival Queen.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 35/3/1

If you know of a business a relation was employed by, there may be a relevant collection in the archives, like this record of Miss Bunker receiving a gold watch for 10 years' service at Rainster House.

Page from the Rainster House Album, part of Rainster House papers and photographs, 1945-2005.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 308

Maps can help determine old streets that might have since changed name or numbering or even location. Aerial photographs 'maps' allow you to zoom in from above and trace paths previously walked.

Tauranga City Centre from Matapihi Rail Bridge, by Aero Surveys (NZ) Ltd, June 1965.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Map 23-136

If you use the 'Zoom to 100%' icon in Pae Korokī (from the tools menu on the left of the image), you will see the detail much clearer and crisper, than just 'zooming' in with your mouse or fingers on the screen.

Tales of the streets and clubs and people, are also told in local history publications, such as the early issues of the Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society.

There is a lot to explore in Pae Korokī to help provide context and detail to your family tree, and maybe one day you can publish it in a book, like local historian Robert Craig Scott, or share as a story in Pae Korokī.

National Library have an online guide for family researchers, and Te Ao Mārama Tauranga Library hosts drop-in genealogy sessions the second Tuesday of the month between 10am and 12noon.

 

Enjoy exploring online, or in person at He Puna Wānanga, the Heritage & Research room in Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Library, discovering and adding colourful leaves and story branches to your family tree.

 

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Written by Kate Charteris, Heritage Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

Leita and the Summer of ‘67

From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

“B1164 4/1/67 Leita Lawn & Elizabeth Robertson resting at Soundshell”
Glassine envelope and 120-format cellulose acetate film negative
Bay of Plenty Times/Gifford-Cross Collection, Tauranga City Library

Leita – it was the name scribbled in green pencil on a crumpled glassine envelope that jumped out at me. For the last eighteen months I have been engaged part-time as a contractor, working through boxes of negatives from the Bay of Plenty Times/Gifford-Cross collection in the Tauranga City Library, rehousing the negatives in archival enclosures, transcribing metadata from the envelopes and digitizing the photographs. After digitization and processing, the images eventually appear online as the Gifford-Cross Collection on the Library’s web site Pae Korokī.

After handling many thousands of envelopes one could be forgiven, perhaps, for becoming a little jaded and glossing over much of the content, but this first name is pretty unusual. I’d only ever come across one “Leita” and she was a friend of my brother’s in Zimbabwe, half a world and half a lifetime away. So my eye was drawn to it, and then I saw her surname – “Leita Lawn.” She was married but I also knew her brother, and thus that her maiden name was Lawn. Likewise I was aware that her brother was originally from New Zealand, and had returned here. Could it be the same person?

Leita Lawn & Elizabeth Robertson after a performance at the Tauranga Soundshell, 3 Jan 1967
120-format film negative, Gifford-Cross Collection (Ref. gca-14151), Courtesy of Tauranga Library

To cut a long story short, I got in touch with Leita through my brother, sent her the digitized image, and she confirmed that she was indeed one of the two girls pictured.

“I was one of Max Cryer's first batch of singing children. I'll forward this to Elizabeth and the others. Two years after this my family had settled in what was then Rhodesia. Not long after Max died, I listened online to a radio interview given by someone who was on that tour with us.  Such a blast from the past - like your photo!”

Print from microfilm, Bay of Plenty Times, 4 Jan 1967, Courtesy of Tauranga City Library

A quick look at the Bay of Plenty Times on microfilm at the Library revealed the photograph was one of several taken that day at the Mount 5000 Club talent quest semi-finals at the Tauranga Soundshell. Other acts included the Nicholas Sisters (winners of the second heat, instrumental medley), Bill Swinton (second placed, vocal solo) and David Pearson and Peter McGregor (third, piano accordion and double bass duet).

Town Cryer, LP by Max Cryer and the Children (Leita Lawn, Judy Waite, Elizabeth Robertson, Sonia Carter, Bruce Matthews, Garth Jacobsen, Graeme McMahon, Neil Rowlands) (Spotify)

Max and the children, Auckland, 1966
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections Footprints Ref. 06997

Leita continued:

“I'll attach a photo of us recording that Town Cryer album - one of me looking cross-eyed, Elizabeth just behind me. We only ever did one or two takes - all in one go, sharps and flats included ... I feel sad when I look at Sonya and Graeme in that photo. My mum and I went to Sonya's funeral not a year later after she drowned during a fishing trip with her father and his friend. And then Graeme died just a few years later.”

The caption for the photograph in the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection includes a reference to the planned tour which would include the appearance in Tauranga:

Entertainer Max Cryer and his group of young singers from Otāhuhu record 'Eidelweiss' for the Zodiac label at Stebbing Recording Studios in Auckland. The soloist at the microphone with Max is Neil Rowlands. The group had been asked to record songs for an LP, 'Town Cryer', after a successful appearance at the TV Festival Review earlier in the year. Future plans included an appearance on the Christmas edition of Revue 66 and a tour of beach carnivals over the New Year holidays. Photograph published in the South Auckland Courier Central Edition, 30 November 1966, p. 26

Max Cryer and the Children on Revue 66, Auckland Town Hall, NZTV, 1966
Photo courtesy of Max Cryer Collection and audioculture.co.nz

Cryer, who died in August last year, recalled to Audioculture in 2017:

“Suddenly everyone wanted to know. We were hired by big department stores, shopping malls, beach carnivals, movie premieres and TV shows. Of course, as time moved, the children grew up and were gradually replaced. But each and every one of them was a cheerful singer, lively but well-behaved not precocious, and never nervous. Over time, we recorded nine albums with hardly ever a studio second take.”

Reunion of Max Cryer and “the children,” Bombay Hills, 2011
(Leita with her hands on Max’s shoulder)
Photo courtesy of Bruce Matthews

“We old ‘children’ from the original group had a lovely reunion with Max about ten years ago at Bruce’s alpaca farm in the Bombay Hills.”

Leita now lives in a Bronte-like cottage in the English North Pennines.

References

Geraden Cann & Glenn McConnell (2021) Max Cryer remembered as ‘showbiz through and through’ after dying at 86, on Stuff, 26 Aug 2021, https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/300392377/max-cryer-remembered-as-showbiz-through-and-through-after-dying-at-86

Gareth Shute (2019) Max Cryer, published on Audioculture, 4 Jul 2019 https://www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/max-cryer

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This archival item has been digitised and will be available to view on Pae Korokī. For more information about this and other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: Research@tauranga.govt.nz

Written by Brett Payne, Digitisation Contractor at Tauranga City Library