Post by NZBC on Oct 26, 2015 10:05:56 GMT 12
citylibrary.pncc.govt.nz/learn-create/heritage-research/
Monday, November 2 is the day Palmerston North's eighth annual Local History Week opens.
The city library's Research and Archives team has crammed more than two dozen events, almost all of them free, into seven full-on days, designed for everyone from seasoned historians to first-timers taking a peek into Manawatu's past.
There'll be talks, workshops, guided walks, out of town trips, a book launch, the Mina McKenzie memorial lecture, and tours around two famous local heritage homes, Caccia Birch House and Highden Manor.
Even the library's regular pre-schoolers' sessions will feature simple historical themes.
City archivist Lesley Courtney says: "Every year we are stunned by the stories that are still to be told about our region, and the people that come forward to support the week."
Archives specialists Maria Shiva and Elizabeth Connelly have spent months doing much of the planning for the event – gathering ideas for topics, enlisting speakers and tour guides and organising dates and times.
"We are always looking for ideas," says Shiva.
"We always love it when people come to us with something in mind that they can present."
Her own favourite people from our history are Louisa Snelson, wife of the borough's first shopkeeper and mayor George Mathew Snelson, and Dr Arthur Anderson Martin, a much-respected local doctor who died in World War I.
Connelly says her picks would be the earliest days of Palmerston North, the coming of the railway, and Alexander McMinn, founder/editor of the Manawatu Standard.
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A major milestone this year is the 120th anniversary of Caccia Birch House in Te Awe Awe St.
The gracious homestead and grounds will be open on Sunday, November 8, showing displays and exhibits from various eras of the house's history.
The city library is running a quiz about the house as part of the celebrations.
The Palmerston North Heritage Trust $10 calendar for 2016 – a nostalgic souvenir in itself – is now on sale at the library with A Taste of Our Past as its theme.
It's all about food – shopping, selling, distribution and consumption.
Lesley Courtney adds: "it's a means for the trust to highlight the wonderful gems we hold in the archives."
All the calendar's Palmerston-region photos are included in the library archives' Pataka Ipurangi digital collection.
They include iconic businesses such as Boniface Bros. bakery, greengrocer Joe Kwong Lee, the Co-op store and the Royale Dutch café; pictured also is a hangi in The Square, the CM Ross 50-year jubilee cake, and the cover picture of an oldtime picnic on the Caccia Birch House lawn, complete with tea trolley.
A ramble around the little village cemetery of Ashhurst is one of several Local History Week out-of-town events.
Ashhurst history enthusiast Heather Smith will guide the walk around Ashhurst Domain Cemetery on November 7, and talk about several of the pioneers buried there.
In December 1900, the Manawatu Standard reported: "the residents of Ashhurst are pleased that their cry for a cemetery has at last been answered. The spot decided on will, with a little expense, make one of the prettiest looking cemeteries for miles around."
It officially opened in July 1901, and the first burial was on August 1 at 2pm – for George Alexander Scott, a farmer whose home was on the Ashhurst-Bunnythorpe Rd.
Smith relates a story told to her about how a visiting child noticed a few headstones with 'RIP' carved in them.
"She asked a friend what that stood for. 'Return if possible' was the quipped reply, and from that day on she avoided graves with large cracks in the concrete or sunken earth."
"In a genealogy sense," Smith adds, "they can return," through their life stories.
She muses: "there are reports in the (old) papers of six little pall-bearers all dressed in white bearing tiny coffins of playmates to gravesites."
The layout of the cemetery, she explains, was designed free of charge by Nils Magnus Person, a colourful character and borough councillor who had been caretaker of the Palmerston North cemetery for seven and a half years, and declared: "it is scandalous of any management to allow the dead to be huddled together without any reasonable trace of their whereabouts whatever…"
The week includes a field trip taking participants by bus to the Pahiatua Polish children's post-war camp site and museum, ($20pp).
On Friday, November 6 there's morning tea and a special tour at Highden Manor, Awahuri's stately country mansion ($17pp).
Historian Margaret Tennant will give the annual Mina McKenzie memorial lecture; talks will explore Manawatu's military history; and journalist Mervyn d**es will launch his new book Confessions of a State House Kid.
Other attractions are a river walk and commentary about the Manawatu River bridges; and a walk to 1880s-dated Lombard St and Campbell St., with Te Manawa registrar Cindy Lilburn as guide.
Something new this year is Cloudy, with chance of Evernote: discovering how internet cloud computing can help your research, a talk and a separate workshop presented by library digital staff member and genealogist Jaime Ridge.
She'll share essential tips in using Cloud services to assist with historical research, including signing up for Evernote and Microsoft Onedrive.
A free programme available at the library lists all the events and activities.
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www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/lifestyle/73307467/palmerston-north-local-history-week-begins