Albertlanders ( NZ) background (General)

by jhopkins , Sunday, January 10, 2010, 22:46 (5506 days ago) @ unknown

Hi from NZ

I guess you have seen these two references?
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration/6/1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertland

Also if you do a Google search for Albertland, you may find a reference to timelines for Albertland, which will take you to a lot of useful sources. Two of the sources I have used with great success to find information about my earliest NZ ancestors are referenced on that page -
1. http://www.nzetc.org (contains lots of electronic texts from NZ history)

Here is an example, which includes my great grandfather William Hopkins, who with my ggm Sarah Hopkins nee Joseph migrated from the FoD in 1860 and settled in Saltwater Creek:
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc03Cycl-t1-body1-d4-d26.html

2. http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast

This resource can be very useful when looking for info on the early days of settlement - as far as my families are concerned, there are lots of snippets there in the early days, but as time goes on (i.e. into the 20th century) the information dries up - in the early days NZ was so small in terms of Pakeha population, the newspapers covered all sorts of things they no longer give space to - e.g. sports results in tiny towns, accidents, school board election results, court pages, shipping movements etc. A search there for your families of interest may help trace their movements. Use the advanced search options to cut out things like advertisements, unless your ancestors were traders/storekeepers etc and you want to follow their ads.

A NZ author, Dick Scott, wrote a book about settlement around the Kaipara Harbour, called Seven Lives on Salt River. It is an outside shot, but you may find something there - here is a profile on the author:
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Scott,%20Dick

Let me know if you want me to follow up anything for you. I live in North Canterbury where there seem to be quite a lot of FoD descendants.

John