Hello ShonaE.
Please add me to SPADES request. You can send the info privately to me by PM if you prefer. From what I’ve researched early Auckland records were few and far between before the c. 1855 civil registration Acts of Parliament in NZ, and in the UK, though from memory I think Scotland lead the pack. Auckland herself was just a baby, and only just starting to grow a governing local bureaucracy.
In the NZ Completed thread you entered RootsChat on, I stated:-
Quote
Our families first recorded NZ [Auckland] baptism was in the Free Presbyterian Church at the end of 1843, however oral history would suggest that the newly married man was very keen that his wife should be off loaded as quickly as possible, so as to give birth in a cleaner and fresher place, than the overcrowded ship. As the family had practised patronymic naming in Scotland, it is a good possibility, but no records survive to prove, or disprove the oral history.
We may groan today about conditions, but don’t really know how lucky we are.
End of Quote.
The reason behind those comments was because in November 1979 I went to the B D & M registrar in down town Auckland. I had phoned and made enquiries first, so they were awaiting my visit. I was taken down stairs to a sub- basement room where I was sat at a small table and handed the original “leather bound” registers. I see I have noted in the margin of my pencil notes that, the deaths entries started in 1848. Of the entries that I transcribed, it was not until the 1870’s before Grand Parent details were recorded. Prior to that, in most cases, only the father was named, unless the Mother’s name was recorded in the margin as the person registering the information. A number had the notation Thomas Bradshaw, Messenger, Provincial Hospital.
I did not find birth entries for the first born after my ancestor’s arrival in 1842, and have had to rely on the Free Presbyterian Church records, for the earliest born in the family, that was to become one of Auckland’s Founding pioneering families.
- Alan.
