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

Tim Walker and Robley (Te Ropere)

On 7^th April a good turnout of Society members were on hand to listen to Tim Walker talk knowledgeably and entertainingly about Robley’s relationship with Tauranga and New Zealand.

Cover of Robley – Soldier with  Pencil, by L.W. Melvin, 1957
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī

Tim Walker has been researching the life and endeavours of Horatio Gordon Robley (1840-1930) since 1980. His 1985 Master Thesis Robley: Te Ropere is available online. Robley was a Lieutenant with the 68^th Durham Light Infantry in Tauranga in 1864-1866. During that time he took part in the battles at Pukehinahina (the Gate Pa) and Te Ranga. But it was the experiences afterwards, as he developed close relationships with Māori, that had an indelible influence on him. These relationships, which were centred on his love of painting Māori life and portraits, opened up friendship s. In 1865 he ‘married’ Harete Mauao, daughter of the rangatira Tāmati Mauao who died in the same year. Their son, Hamiora Tu Ropere (also known as Sam Robley) was born in 1866. In 1983 Tim connected with Robley’s great granddaughter, the late Googie Te Weurangi Tapsell of Maketū who answered his letter to the editor in the Bay of Plenty Times.

From his portraiture, Robley developed a strong interest in moko. As a retired Major General in London in the last decade of the 19^th Century, Robley set about research for his book MOKO; Or Maori Tattooing (1896). As part of this, he  sought out preserved Māori heads, which he saw as key to understanding the art - which he knew had ceased to be practiced. Over time, he went on to collect close to forty examples. His attempts to see the collection back in Aotearoa were unsuccessful, with the collection finding a home at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1907. In 2014, the collection came home, thanks to the Te Papa Tongarewa repatriation programme. While often seen as someone with an interest in the macabre, Robley’s interest was firmly centred in his belief that moko was the most sophisticated non-Western artform in the world. His growing awareness that it was a ‘system’ of design that generated new designs as it was practiced, led him to believe it would one day re-emerge. When he did, his hope was that a new generation of practitioners would be able to see ‘the old art’ ‘in the skin’, and ‘in the round’.

Tim is now working on a book centred on Robley, who maintained links with Tauranga all his life. Tim would appreciate hearing from anyone who may know of the existence of  material in private hands relating to Robley. In particular, he is interested in knowing more about Mr G G McCandlish who was a correspondent of Robley’s in the 1920s, and Mr Robley Ngatai who was born in the 1890s, probably in or near Otūmoetai. Email Tim