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Genealogy Investigations, Wellington (2026)

17/04/2026

A mountain death
Mt Ruapehu is beautiful and deadly.
Not just for the possibility of eruption or lahar - but for the sometimes treacherous weather conditions. Fine one moment, foggy or stormy the next.
It was this that caught William Napier Bingham out on a day climb up the mountain.
He had started out with others in March 1913. The mountain loomed over them, initially in brilliant sunlight and topped with pure white snow.
An intelligent young man, Bingham (usually called Napier) had come from Ohakune where he began a job as a chemist only a week before.
Napier was born to William and Marion Bingham in New South Wales in Australia in 1892.
He joined a group who were going on the climb to the camp with the intention of returning in the evening.
But as they - in small groups - started out - the weather began to turn, fog rolling down from the summit.
Rather than clearing as it sometimes did in sunlight - it thickened and most of the parties opted to stop and descend again.
Madeline Coche was part of a small group that opted to turn back but lost their way and spent the night on the mountain, beginning their descent again the next morning. It had been a horrible night. Despite having matches they were unable to light a fire and had little food or water.
She told the inquest that she saw Napier try to get over two large rocks near the creek but did not think she could make it so forced her way through bush.
When she came out she saw Napier’s hat and stick in the water but had heard nothing.
She continued to follow the creek down and it was later everyone realised he had not returned.
Search parties were sent out, with experienced Ohakune residents turning out to look for Napier.
He was eventually found - dead in a pool about half a mile from where Madeline had last seen him.
He had a head injury with a nasty gash on his forehead.
The inquest was told he was in a very rough and isolated part of the mountain and it took several days to bring his body down.
The coroner found his death accidental after falling and recommended that a fog bell be put on the mountain to warn other hikers.
Napier is buried at the Mangatera Cemetery in Dannevirke.
Stories of our history: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

10/04/2026

Who remembers getting free milk at school?
Did you know it started in Lower Hutt at Randwick School and was initially an anonymous benefactor who started it just in the one school before it caught the notice of a Prime Minister who rolled it out across the country?
The ambitious plan started nationally in 1937 and ran until 1967.
Randwick School was still young itself, in 1929 when the principal Mr A E Werry became worried about malnourished and hungry children coming to school.
It was the local mayor Alexander Fowler Roberts who offered to pay £600 a year for three years for milk to be given to the pupils. That’s a huge sum worth now about $80,000.
He did it on the condition that his contribution was anonymous.
Shortly after the scheme came to the attention of Walter Nash who was the Lower Hutt Labour MP.
A study was even done on the children to see if it helped. A newspaper at the time reported that at the start the children were weighed and examined - and at the end of six months - and through the winter months - most had gained weight and were in better health.
It was such a success it prompted the Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage and the first Labour Government to roll it out nationwide.
For a short while during the war kids were also given apples.
It led to a school job that was prized, that of milk monitor.
The National Government in 1967 put an end to it because of the cost.
It was not known for some time that the man who came up with the money was Alexander Roberts.
Born in Dunedin in September 1882, he was educated in Edinburgh and Cambridge he worked at a stock and station agency later becoming a director.
During World War One he was an embarkation officer in Wellington.
Roberts became a commissioner of the British Empire Exhibition in London - later receiving knighthood for his service.
He went on to sit on the Lower Hutt Borough Council and became mayor in 1929 sitting until 1931 when he did not stand again.
He returned to serve as an embarkation officer again during the Second World War.
He had married Hannah Ruby Farquhar in 1907 and they had three sons.
Roberts died in Calvary Hospital in Wellington on March 19, 1961 and was cremated at Karori Cemetery.
With thanks to the Hutt City Libraries and Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.
The stories of our past: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

03/04/2026

The ANZAC flagpole
We usually end our stories with where someone is buried but this time we are going to start with it.
No one really knows where Norman Frederick Hastings is buried. He was one of the many Allied Soldiers who died as part of the Gallipoli campaign where he was wounded and later died and was likely interred as one of the many soldiers during the chaos.
Norman was born in Auckland on July 18, 1879, to Frederick and F***y Hastings but they moved to Wellington where he was raised in Brooklyn. It was there he went into the Wellington City Rifles in the 1890s.
He enlisted in the 34 Company Army Service Corps in 1900 and was shipped to South Africa to take part in the Second Anglo-Boer War where he gained the rank of sergeant and was wounded in action twice.
On coming back to New Zealand he enlisted in the Karori Defence Rifle Club and married Hilda May Barr.
He became a commissioned officer in 1909 and then posted to A Squadron, 6th (Manawatu) Mounted rifles then passed the promotion to captain.
He began work for the New Zealand Railways Department as an engineering fitter and foreman.
With the declaration of World War One, New Zealand established the Expeditionary force and the Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment was formed. Norman joined the unit and headed to Egypt in 1914.
In April 1915, Norman was one of the many who went to the Gallipoli Peninsula and in May he arrived at Anzac Bay where his regiment occupied Walker’s Ridge. He was known for his strong leadership as his regiment held the perimeter.
For weeks they fought at different points around the area.
Hastings assumed command of the 6th Squadron after its commander, Major Charles Dick, was wounded in the assault on Destroyer Hill, which opened the way to Table Top and allowed the New Zealand Infantry Brigade to seize Rhododendron Ridge in preparation for the attack on Chunuk Bair.
Promoted in the field to major, Hastings commanded the 6th Squadron on Chunuk Bair on 8 and 9 August as the New Zealanders attempted to hold their position.
He was wounded when a bomb exploded shattering his leg but there was delay in his evacuation.
He was put into the care of the 16th Casualty Clearing Station, but it had to be abandoned when it came under fire. It’s not clear exactly when he died but it’s likely during that evacuation.
Like a lot of men, he would have been buried although without a record he was initially listed as missing in action. He was later declared as having probably died of his wound received in combat. His likely burial place, in the Embarkation Pier Cemetery, was later marked with a special memorial by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
But there is another memorial to him.
The New Zealand Railways Department put up the kauri and Australian hardwood memorial flagpole dedicated to the ANZAC corps at the Petone Railway Station. Constructed in 1926 it was put up in time for the inaugural ANZAC Day commemorations.
The Railways Department has always commemorated those employees who went to war including with plaques at the Wellington Railway Station and the flagpole which still stands in Petone.
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27/03/2026

The loss of the Cospatrick
Out of 472 people heading to New Zealand on the Cospatrick - a three masted sailing ship - only three survived, making it the worst sailing ocean disaster in our history - even though it never made it here.
The big frigate was built of teak in Burma in 1856 for a wealthy London shipowner but ended up being sold to Smith, Fleming and Co which used the ship for trading.
In 1863, the ship, along with others, laid a telegraph cable in the Persian Gulf before being going back and forward to Australia.
Once the Cospatrick was sold to Shaw, Savill & Co of London she became an immigrant ship.
On September 11, 1874, the Cospatrick left Gravesend in England with 433 passengers on board and 44 crew under Captain Alexander Elmslie.
Like many of the ships at the time, most of the passengers were assisted emigrants, heading to New Zealand with the hope of a new life. They often came with only what they were able to carry.
Most of them were labourers, agricultural workers who were in high demand and servants. Many had never been at sea - or even seen it.
The first five weeks of the voyage (they usually lasted about three months) were uneventful.
It was not the first time the Cospatrick had made the trip and often carried huge amounts of cargo. In this case it was carrying 27,000 litres of alcoholic spirits.
A few days before the ship would have been near the Cape of Good Hope, not long after midnight, ship’s second mate Henry Macdonald was woken by shouts of fire.
Up on deck he found a fire broken out in the store where tar, paint and rope were stored. A fire crew was called.
An attempt was made to turn the ship so that the smoke and flames were turned away from the ship but it failed.
The fire got out of control and crew and passengers panicked. Of the five lifeboats on board, capable of taking 187 people, only two were launched successfully. One, filled with women and children capsized, drowning all on board. Others took to the water.
It took 40 hours for the ship to finally sink and after all the alcohol on board exploded.
For part of the night the lifeboats managed to stay together before the weather got worse. There were 62 on board them.
Then one went missing and was never found.
The British Sceptre found the last lifeboat six days later - in which only a few men were left, reduced to eating the dead. By then they were over 500 miles from where the ship had sunk.
Only second mate Charles Henry MacDonald, able seaman Thomas Lewis, and passenger Edward Cotter were found alive.
An inquiry thought the fire had been accidentally started by someone using the stores with a naked flame but other theories, like spontaneous combustion were also considered and that the fire had started when someone was trying to steal some of the alcohol.
A memorial to those lost in the disaster is on the village green in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire in England - of those on board 17 local residents of two families were from the area.
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20/03/2026

How Miramar got its name
Did you know that Miramar, now famously the home of Wētā Workshop, was once an island separated from the main land that is Wellington?
Or that Miramar actually means ‘sea view’ in Spanish? Or that the man who named it, Coutts Crawford, probably has more things named after him and his family in Wellington than anyone else?
Crawford was the first European to settle in the area so the name he gave it stuck. But the descendants of Maori explorer Kupe had settled there first on the island of Motukairangi, which was surrounded by a lagoon known as Te Rotokura or Para.
The lagoon was drained with the arrival of the European settlers in 1840, and the area was named initially Watts Peninsula until the land was bought by former Royal Navy colonist James Coutts Crawford who renamed the area Miramar. The land that is now the shopping area and the surrounding homes was originally the lagoon.
Crawford was born to naval officer James Coutts Crawford and his wife Jane on January 19, 1817 in Scotland. He was educated at the Royal Naval College and went to sea aged 14. In 1834 he was awarded the Royal Humane Society medal for jumping overboard to rescue sailors.
He discharged himself in 1837 and sailed for Australia where he bought cattle and drove a 700 strong herd overland on a five month journey between Sydney and Adelaide. Mount Crawford in South Australia was named after him.
In his first visit to New Zealand he bought land, most of what would be the Miramar Peninsula, before returning to Sydney to buy stock. He then visited England where he married Sophia Whitley Deans Dundas. She died in 1852 and he remarried Jessie Cruickshank McBarnett and brought her to settle in New Zealand where three of their sons were born.
On the Miramar Peninsula he built a tunnel to drain the lagoon, eventually draining the whole swamp and planting different types of grass.
It was Crawford’s brother-in-law who built the house he called Miramar that became the name of the suburb.
He later sold off allotments from the land he held in what would be Kilbirnie which became the founding of that suburb. The new property owners paid for a road from Newtown to Kilbirnie and named it after Crawford.
A year later he put up more land in Seatoun, laying out roads and even allowing for tram lines. In astonishing forward planning he also laid out land for churches, schools and parks.
In 1886 the Government took back 245 acres in Evans Bay for defence purposes - which became Shelley Bay.
Crawford also served on the Legislative Council - Parliament before it was called Parliament - explored along the Whanganui and Rangitīkei rivers, the central plateau and northern Wairarapa, looking for mining potential and routes for road and rail.
He was appointed Resident Magistrate in Wellington in 1864 and Sheriff of Wellington in 1866.
In 1887, and in failing health, he returned to England to seek medical advice, dying there in 1889 and is buried in the Brompton Cemetery in London.
But even if he himself is barely remembered his name lives on in Wellington, in Coutts St, Crawford Road, Mount Crawford, Kilbirnie after a town in Scotland that was one of his homes, Monorgan Road after family holdings and many after relatives - Charles St, Duncan St, Dundas St, Henry St, Nevay Rd, Inglis St and Cruickshank St to name only a few.
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13/03/2026

Who remembers carless days?
Suddenly the memory of it doesn’t seem as weird when there is a possibility of fuel rationing and even perhaps the return of measures to conserve fuel as war rages on in Iran.
It didn’t quite work the way the National Government of the day wanted. So many got around it and there were even over 3000 prosecutions of people caught using their cars when they weren't supposed to.
It was Sir Keith Holyoake who signed the bill into life as Governor-General after the scheme was brought in by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and Energy Minister Bill Birch.
During the 1979 oil crisis the government looked for ways to reduce fuel costs and decided on a scheme that would mean that there would be one day a week you would be unable to drive your car.
Many drove anyway - after all there weren't enough cops to catch everyone - or simply had two cars, each one with a different day, worked out to drive a work vehicle that was exempt or swapped cars with friends, family and neighbours.
But after quite some time it was worked out that the savings actually came to about 4%..
It had been down to post office officials to hand out exemptions (which got them a lot of flack) and some people drove miles to go to a post office where they knew they could get one.
The Government did try other measures - dropping speed limits (driving slower to reduce fuel consumption) and banning the sale of petrol on weekends.
It led to a huge uptake on converting cars to CNG or LPG -but that didn’t last. When was the last time you saw a car converted to either?
So we got a sticker that was put on the windscreen and if caught could get a fine of up to $400.
Oddly - Thursday was the most popular day chosen for going carless and there was a thriving black market for fake stickers.
Some people went to different post offices and got an sticker for another day and swapped them out when they needed to use a car.
It lasted until May 1980 when it was suspended and instead a piece of legislation came in designed for fuel rationing.
It’s unlikely it much affected the politicians of the day - most, like today, had access to vehicles and drivers.
Holyoake was born in Mangamutu near Pahiatua, the son of Henry and Esther.
Brought up in the Plymouth Brethren church, his childhood was restricted but from 12 he worked on the family hop and to***co farm and learned from his teacher mother and became involved in farming associations that led to his interest in politics.
He became Prime Minister for the first time two months before the 1957 election, when Sidney Holland retired but lost that election to Walter Nash. He took it back in 1960 when National returned to power.
He led his party to another victory in 1969 when he appointed Robert Muldoon as Minister of Finance. But they lost the 1972 election.
He became Governor-General in 1977, and died in 1983 in Wellington. After a state funeral he was cremated at Karori Cemetery.
Stories of our history: https://genealogyinvestigations.co.nz/index.html

06/03/2026

The oven man
There was a time when the name Shacklock was known in every Kiwi home.
For more than 60 years homes were warmed by a Shacklock oven and meals were prepared on them for the whole family.
It all started when Henry Shacklock became irritated at the quality of the imported stove in his own home. And his clients felt the same.
He designed and built his own coal range then remade it over and over until it worked the way he wanted it to. He called it the Orion. One of the reasons it worked so well was it did not need to be fully built in. It could be put in a corner or replace another stove easily.
He put it on the market and it became a hit.
Henry Ely Shacklock was born on July 21, 1839 to John and Mary Shacklock in Nottinghamshire, England. His father died when he was only two.
He became an apprentice in ironmoulding in Nottingham and Derby but decided there would be more opportunities in New Zealand.
Henry sailed to New Zealand on the Bombay landing in Port Chalmers where his first work was scrub cutting. His soon to be wife arrived the next year - Elisabeth Bradley along with Henry’s sister Emma and her fiance. Once both sets were married they moved to Oamaru.
Henry moved back to Dunedin in 1866 where he built a home and began an ironfoundry called the South End foundry in Crawford St and he quickly became known as a skilled worker.
His business really took off after he designed the stove.
When the firm was formed into a private company, H. E. Shacklock Limited, it had a capital value of £25,000.
The Orion came in 12 different models, with a wood burner and a plate rack along with one model that had a double oven. Then in 1925 the company produced the first electric stove.
The company was later bought by Fisher and Paykel.
Henry was a member of the Congregational church and a foundation member of his local school committee.
However he suffered from depression and from the 1890’s became increasingly ill. He took his own life in December 1909 and is buried in the Oamaru Cemetery.
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27/02/2026

The lions in the park
Hastings’ Cornwall Park was notable for several things - the aviary, cricket, being the city’s first official park and of course, the lions.
The two lions, reclined on plinths, are probably in photographs of children who played in the park for several generations now. But they are not just decoration.
The lions form part of the King George V drinking fountain built in 1911.
The park was gifted by James Nelson Williams - from his huge Frimley estate (where Frimley Park is now) - and in 1901 it was gifted in honour of the tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall.
Not that either of the future King and Queen saw it, their tour did not include Hawke’s Bay.
The drinking fountain was built later - to commemorate the Duke becoming King.
It wasn’t until 1927 that their son, the Duke of York, saw the monument.
To mark the coronation the Government offered to grant a subsidy of up to £250 towards public buildings and structures.
In Hastings, a public meeting was called to discuss what the money could be used for. Ideas ‘ranged from the er****on of a municipal theatre to the construction of a two-mile boulevard from Hastings to Havelock North.’
Ultimately it was decided to erect a drinking fountain in Cornwall Park.
The design of the drinking fountain was the subject of a competition which was won by Hastings Borough Council draughtsman and engineer Victor Ernest Larcomb.
He had designed it to be constructed in concrete, with a tall central column (which the plaques telling the history of the park are on) with an octagonal base - the lions and decorated in moulded fruit and foliage. It was a design that was typical of the time.
Built by E & W Platt of Wellington, it was once working - water flowed freely but it is not known when it stopped working.
Larcomb modelled the lions after Wellington’s King Dick - the first lion at Wellington Zoo and had intended for the lions’ manes to be a red similar to the colour of the granite in the column and the rest of the lion were to be terracotta.
Larcomb had been born in 1888 to Ernest (a civil engineer and architect) and his wife Mary Ann.
Larcomb followed his father’s footsteps, working as a draughtsman in the Feilding Public Works Department then went to work for a Wellington architectural firm.
By 1911 he was working in Hastings when he penned the design for the fountain.
He went on to be a founding associate member of the New Zealand Society of Civil Engineers and returned to work in Wellington.
He died on October 31, 1961 and is buried at Karori Cemetery.
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20/02/2026

The Ōngarue rail disaster
The train driver saw it as he rounded the bend, just after 6:00am on the morning of 6 July 1923. A huge pile to earth and debris right across the tracks.
The southbound Auckland to Wellington express was descending through rough country near Ōngarue, just north of Taumarunui.
Alexander Stewart was at the controls. He was one of the most experienced drivers on the line.
As the engine came around a sharp curve he suddenly saw the track ahead was gone.
Instead a massive landslip — mud, rocks and trees — lay piled across the rails.
Stewart shut off steam immediately. The train was already running downhill under its own weight but before the brakes could fully bite, the locomotive hit the slip.
Hidden inside the mud was a huge boulder, about 1.25 metres across.
The cowcatcher pushed it forward for a short distance — only a few chains — before the sheer weight of it threw the engine off the rails.
The locomotive, tender and postal van derailed.
Behind them, the first three passenger carriages bore the full force of what followed. The second carriage smashed into and through the first.
Then the third carriage ploughed forward and rode up onto the wreckage, telescoping the carriages together.
A gas container beneath the third carriage burst into flames, adding fire to the chaos — though another fall of earth smothered it before it could spread.
Further back around the bend, passengers felt only violent shaking. Some slept through it. Windows shattered, but those carriages stayed upright.
At the front, the wreckage was tangled and crushed and survivors were trapped, pinned by timber and twisted steel.
Men from Ōngarue ran to the site.
Uninjured passengers climbed out and helped, pulling people free, cutting through wreckage where they could.
The engine driver and the fireman were both badly burned.
Two hundred passengers had been on the train. Among them was the 1923 New Zealand Māori rugby team.
Eleven people were killed instantly while six died later from their injuries.
Twenty-eight more were seriously injured.
It was the worst railway disaster New Zealand had known at the time — and the first major loss of life on the railways.
A board of inquiry later found the cause was heavy rain, which had loosened the hillside above the track.
The hidden boulder made escape impossible.
As a result, gas lighting in railway carriages was rapidly phased out in favour of electric lights.
Carriages were strengthened to reduce the chance of telescoping in future accidents.
Usually we finish with a grave - but there are too many to choose from here and out of respect we did not pick one - instead, only two years ago a new memorial was put up on the Ōngarue-Waimiha Road, near Taumarunui.
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13/02/2026

The Pacific pirate
It’s hard to separate fact from fiction in the life of William ‘Bully” Henry Hayes.
In some ways he is a larger than life figure who was considered a rogue, pirate, slaver, bigamist and notorious ship’s captain.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in America, his father Henry Hayes was a lumberjack but his mother is unknown.
He is believed to be a close relative of Rutherford Hayes who would go on to be President.
After learning to sail on the Great Lakes, William went into the navy serving in China but was dismissed returning to America to marry his first wife - Lucy in 1846.
He returned to sea - trading although his movements are not well known. It did taken him into the Pacific - where he would make his reputation
In 1857 - with no sign that he had divorced Lucy, he married again - Rosetta Collis in Adelaide in Australia on August 1. Just 25 days later he married Amelia Moffatt.
With hard times on him and facing bankruptcy he sailed on the Cincinatti to Otago where for a time he was part of the entertainment troupe, the Buckinghams and married one of them Rosetta Buckingham in 1862.
Together they opened a hotel, The Prince of Wales in Arrowtown but by then he had gained a reputation and the pair left for Nelson where Rosetta drowned in 1864.
He married Emily Butler the following year in Christchurch.
He had become a sort of latter day pirate, convincing people to go into business with him, partnering to get a ship, and then he would sail away and the other party would never see him again.
He most often traded in copra and coconut oil but was also known for blackbirding - kidnapping people who were then taken into slavery on the plantations in Fiji.
Hayes would go to one of the Pacific Islands, offering a sort of work and passage often to nearby islands only to get them on board and head for Fiji.
It led to an enquiry by the British Consul in Apia but before anything came of it, Hayes managed to get himself on to the brig Pioneer under a pretence of checking the chronographs and with the help of another rogue sailor Ben Pearse, sailed off.
When Pearse was arrested in Hong Kong, Hayes took the ship, renamed it the Leonora and took off, only to be shipwrecked for six months before. Rescue came in the form of three ships, and one of them was the Rosario of the British Navy whose captain was persuaded to take Hayes to Sydney - Hayes again sailed off, this time in a small boat and made for Guam where he ended up in prison anyway.
In true Hayes style, he offered to captain a yacht to the Pacific Islands for a man only to leave him behind and sail with the man’s wife.
On board was a man called Dutch Pete - a cook and part time seaman who did not like Hayes and one night, after being taken to task by Hayes for his steering, took a piece of wood and smashed Hayes over the head with it, killing him on March 31, 1877. They were near the Marshall Islands at the time.
While there is some suggestion that Hayes was buried in Hawaii - most reports have him “buried at sea” - that is, his body was put overboard.’
As for his nickname - he was often called a bully - and was considered a cruel man, it in fact came from Bulli - a Samoan word for elusive - which he certainly was for most of his career.
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06/02/2026

The father of curling
As the winter olympics takes over news and our screens, one of the sports that is oddly thrilling is curling.
The slide of the heavy granite stones toward the target or house and the shouting as brooms are used to sweep the ice.. Think of it as lawn bowls colder, louder and more tactical cousin.
Curling was brought to New Zealand by Scottish immigrants in the 1860s - in the South Island where there were places it could be played.
In fact the Baxter Cup was the second oldest sporting trophy in New Zealand. The oldest was the Ballinger Belt for rifle shooting.
Curling might have stayed one of those things that was a regional oddity except for Thomas Callender - often called the father of curling in New Zealand.
Thomas was born on January 25, in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland to Thomas and Margaret.
He worked originally for his father at a tannery then became an accountant and married Jane Baird in 1850. By 1863 they had found children and boarded the Sir Willima Eyre for the trip to New Zealand, landing in Bluff and setting up home in Dunedin.
He worked for a local firm before starting his own accountancy company. He was well respected and often called upon to be an auditor and liquidator.
Jane had another child the year after they arrived but in 1867 died in childbirth.
Thomas set up the Dunedin Curling Club in 1873. The New Zealand Association of Curling was set up in 1886.
He was also a keen bowler and is also credited with bringing that sport to New Zealand. He was considered a life member of several clubs he was influential in starting.
He was also noted as being a great collector of books and his collection was said to have historical significance.
Callender acted as auditor for the National Insurance company, the Westport Coal company, the “Otago Dally Times” company, the Kaitangata Railway and Coal company, the New Zealand Hardware company, McLeod Bros. Ltd., the Roslyn Tramway company, the Dunedin Sale-yards company, the Farmers' Agency company, the Perpetual Trustees, Executors and Agency company, and a good many mining companies, and was secretary to the “Moonlight” Sluicing Company, Ltd and was also a freemason.
There was an initial rush of curling clubs around the Otago region but it died away as the remoter areas that had suitable sites were hard to get to. It began to regain popularity as cars became common and travel was easier.
Today New Zealand is one of the few places that still has traditional ‘crampit’ curling - played outside as well as indoor curling rinks.
Unfortunately New Zealand’s team did not qualify for the curling event but there are 30 other countries on the roster.
Callender died in July 8, 1902 aged 77 and is buried in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery
NOTE: We have altered our posting schedule. We originally started as a way to highlight our research skills but it seems we are victims of our own success. As work gets busier Fran and I have less time to do this - so we are cutting our stories back to once a week.
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Genealogy Investigations

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