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Research in Other Countries => New Zealand => New Zealand Completed Requests => Topic started by: Tikva on Sunday 19 January 20 05:24 GMT (UK)
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Hi,
I am researching my children's Māori ancestry, and whilst they have their whakapapa through a female line, we are trying to find out their gread grandfather's parents names and beyond. I do have the great grandfather's marriage printout, which provides me with names, but I would like to obtain more supporting evidence by trying to obtain a copy of his birth certificate. Unfortunately, he was known by a number of names, some of them Māori, and others, English. So I wanted to find out if there was a way to find the names of all Births on a specific date in New Zealand? The date concerned is the 9th of July 1900, and this information was obtained from his death record. Is there any way that I can do this? Many thanks.
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Short answer: no.
Longer answer: are you familiar with the General Birth Microfiche and the Maori Birth Microfiche? It ought to be possible to look at the permutations of a name in a particular year for the General, and for the names in toto on the Maori records.
You could also have a go with the NZ Births, deaths, and marriages historical records website for that date and variations of the name to see if you get a hit:
https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Home/
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Sorry I can’t help you Tivka, but I would recommend that you add “Maori” ancestry to your subject heading to attract the attention of those who might be able to help you. :)
Just a thought .... as with all births in earlier generations anywhere in the world there is the possibility that the birth date is wrong. There are occasional threads about people who go through life celebrating their birthday on one date, when it had been wrong all along. :) As for death certificates, the information on that is only as accurate as the knowledge of the informant. I’m not trying to discourage you, but if your search doesn’t find what you are looking for, you might need to expand the search.
As far as I am aware, there is no database in other countries which will give the names of everyone who was born on a particular date, however someone with NZ expertise will be able to confirm.
I’m sure someone will be along soon to help you. Good luck.
Added: TT beat me to it, but I will post this reply anyway.
Added: Have you considered a DNA test to see what matches you get? Other branches of the family may have more information. I am not sure about the take up rates for DNA tests in NZ, but you might be lucky. It would be best to test the oldest generation of the branch which includes your children’s g grandfather’s line, so their grandmother or grandfather if still living.
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Maori births were not compulsory to register until 1913
Births in the Māori Registers (1913 – 1961) also include:
Entry number
Child (Tamaiti)
Date of birth (Te ra i Whanau ai)
Place of birth (Te kainga i Whanau ai)
First name (Te ingoa)
Sex (He tane he wahine ranei)
If stillborn (from 1935)
Father (Papa)
Name in full (Te Katoa o tona ingoa)
Residence (Kainga)
Tribe (Iwi)
Description (Ahuatanga)
Mother (Whaea)
Name in full (Te Katoa o tona ingoa)
Residence (Kainga)
Tribe (Iwi)
Description (Ahuatanga)
Informant (Kai Whakautu)
Name (and signature if given) (Ingoa me te hainatanga mehemea he pera)
Residence (Kainga)
Occupation (Tana Mahi)
Degree of relationship (if any) to child
(Whanautanga ki te tamaiti - mehemea he pera)
The record also notes the registry office and the provincial district in which the birth was recorded.
Cheers Janette
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Hi Tikva,
From my experience I agree with Twiggy Tree, no, it's not possible.
I would suggest that you search the NZ Births, deaths, and marriages historical records website for variations of the name but using a wider date search in case, as Ruskie suggested, the date given might be incorrect:
https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Home/
Maybe also try local history libraries, NZSG local branches, and the Whakapapa websites listed here: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=477808.0
Spades
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Another possibility is that for a person of interest that I was researching, our library's Maori department (when they still had this) was able, based on the geography (Gisborne), to pull a book from their collection with all the genealogies in it. This is only as a result of it being written about a particular waka (canoe) but you might also be so fortunate.
What I will say though is that the further back this genealogy went the less traditional it was, and couldn't be entered into our GEDCOM as a result of, in one example, there being 3 females involved with 4 males begetting one child.
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[...] a way to find the names of all Births on a specific date in New Zealand?
Hello... expanding Twiggy and Spades' earlier suggestions gives a fairly straightforward way of doing what you want, namely ***searching the BDM website by date. The main problem is that it's extremely time-consuming.
Having said that, I've done it a few times. Mixed success but my latest attempt did break a thirty year old brick wall, so never say never.
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What's more pertinent to your search is mentioned by Janette. Pre-1913 registering of Maori births was optional.
According to the NZ Yearbook, even in the first year of compulsory registration (1913) there were still 17 Maori births registered under the (optional) main Act from a population base of 56,000-ish Maori.
In 1900, when the population base was 43,000-ish, registering under the (optional) main Act was all that was available. The number of Maori parents who chose to register wasn't recorded but you would suspect it to be just as low as 1913 if not lower, if not zero, although I have no proof of that.
My uneducated guess is that there will be no official birth record for you to find.
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For what it's worth, if you want to put up the names of the child and/or parents I can search a list of 1900 births and see if they, or variants, are mentioned.
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*** Searching the BDM website by date involves a combination of searching by "Registration Number" (e.g 1900/000001, then 1900/000002 [and so on] then 1900/29999, then 1900/30000) at the same time limiting the "Search From" and "Search To" to a specific date or dates (e.g Search From:2/7/1900, Search To:16/7/1900).
In this example there will be 30,000 individual search requests sent to the BDM website but the website will only return results for births which occur between the 2nd and the 16th of July 1900.
An extremely repetitive and time-consuming process but fortunately there is software which automates the search. I use the free version of UI.Vision RPA (formerly Kantu). There is also iMacros although last time I looked you needed to purchase a licence to use it fully.
Regards
Beg
EDIT: For anyone thinking the "muliple-search-request" method is abusing the BDM website... it would be incredibly easy for BDM NZ to implement a "wildcard" search option. Or a search by partial name or by date or by field. I gave up asking them several years ago.
EDIT 2: For this search to succeed the Registration Number needs to have a 1900 prefix
e.g 1900/XXXXXX
If the birth was a late registration with, for example, a 1901 prefix it would not be found... bit of a nuisance.
You could then do a 1901 births search requesting another 30,000 searches... but what if the birth was registered in 1902 ... and so on.
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Further to other postings I am trying to do what you have asked.
I am looking for the birth of my grandfather who was born on 28 April 1890. There is no registration with BDM under the name that he was known by - suspect he was illegitimate. I have tried various family names with no success.
I recently made a request to access the Wellington birth register for 1890 but had to provide a name. BDM advised that there was no registration with the name I provided for that date.
So I went to the local library and extracted all the male births for 1890 June quarter from the birth microfiche. This is a very time consuming process which I did over 3 days. An initial check by narrowing down dates provided two possible candidates - further research has eliminated them. When I narrowed down the dates using the online birth index date search function it still showed up people born outside these dates so I may need to re-check them.
I have checked local newspapers for births (illegitimate births not likely to be in newspaper) in Wellington/Christchurch on 28 April 1890 and sent to BDM an Official Information Request (OIA) asking how many males were registered as being born in these places on the specific date so I can cross check to these numbers.
Last resort I have recently sent off a DNA test - fingers crossed!
In respect of Maori births you could try the Maori Land Court offices. They have databases that you can check using names that you have - staff are very helpful. The Minute Books contain a wealth of information including whakapapa. I have recently found some 'gems' relating to the Tapsell whakapapa.
TPB
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Thank you to everyone for your responses - I will go through them all and figure out my next step. :)
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The date concerned is the 9th of July 1900, and this information was obtained from his death record.
Hi again... just curious... is this the 1980 NGATA death record. If so, have you seen his Army service record on Archives NZ. It mentions his father.
Regards
Beg
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Hello Tikva.
Been on holiday, and my phone would not co-operate, and allow me to comment upon your thread.
Now home, my question is, have you consulted the web pages of the WHAKAPAPA CLUB?
It has been of some help to me, but their forum pages appear to have been more active, in the past.
https://www.whakapapaclub.nz/
There is also a crown web site called, Maori Land online, which when you have a few names, can offer info back to the members of the various family groups. The search tool on that site is very good, because when the Maori Land Courts were hearing land claims etc, there was no one standard format, to the way Maori parents choose to record their childrens names, in a written form. Plus many adopted "Christian" names, when being batpised. Therefore all known aka's were listed, and are searchable.
Alan.
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I am looking for the birth of my grandfather who was born on 28 April 1890.
Hello Tgapitbull...
I've just sent you two PMs - one a list of 29 male births registered on 28 Apr 1890, the other a list of 143 male births registered three days either side. These were found on the BDM NZ website using the method I described in my earlier reply.
For what it's worth, you may want to cross-reference the relevant BDM NZ microfiche and keep an eye out for annotations. I'm pretty sure the website is a subset of the fiche, not a substitute for.
Hope this helps.
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Hello Tikva...
Apologies for the thread hi-jack but it seemed the obvious place to post what is a roundabout answer to your original question, the answer being "Yes it is possible".
You can either leave this reply for future researchers with the same question or ask one of the mods to delete it to keep your thread tidy (but please not before Tgapitbull acknowledges this reply).
Either is fine by me.
Regards
Beg
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Many thanks Beg for the 2 x PMs which I will work through and cross check as you suggest. A visit to the local library will be required but will have to wait until next week as I have other commitments this week.
Good luck Tikva with your search.
Tgapitbull
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Last resort I have recently sent off a DNA test - fingers crossed!
Hi again TPB... you might already realise but in the search for your grandfather your DNA won't really help all that much.
Is there a direct male descendant of your grandfather who can take a test.
Regards
Beg
PS - Apologies again Tikva :-)
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Re DNA test - only a great grandson.
TPB
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... a great grandson.
Perfect. Swab him :-)
Tikva - third and last time... my apologies :-)
Regards
Beg
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Have you tried using the familysearch.org website? You can narrow a search down to a particular year, country and type (ie births), and the first names of the parents, without needing the exact spellings or even a surname at all. Familysearch will give you the electronic registration number, which you can then use to narrow down a particular date on nzbdm.