A family history blog

Introduction

When my elderly Uncle Alvin died in 2011 my father inherited his extensive collection of family history research. This included a vast computerised family tree as well as a computer full of documents and letters and many boxes of papers, photos and miscellaneous documents. Although I had always thought there was very little that I could add to it, when I started to dig into the records I found I was wrong. Most of Alvin’s research had been collated before the large-scale digitisation of many genealogical records (for instance the New Zealand BDM Online database), making it straightforward to correct and add to many of the facts in the family tree. I quickly found that researching family history is like a journey into a never-ending labyrinth complete with a myriad of fascinating clues, puzzles, red-herrings and dead ends – an end never in sight.

This site really has a dual purpose – it will document some of my own research, as well as serving as a repository for some of documents and articles that Alvin wrote and collected during his time as our family’s unofficial historian.

Raewyn Hooper, 2017

 

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