Names of pre-Adamites recorded

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 4

Names of pre-Adamites recorded

A list has been compiled of more than 900 persons who lived in the Canterbury block before the arrival of the First Four Ships at Lyttelton in 1850. A sub-committee of the Christchurch City Council’s cultural committee has for two years been researching archives and early records of Canterbury to find these names. Mrs Ann Mee, one of two

members of the sub-commit-[tee representing the New [Zealand Society Of Genealogists (Canterbury group), said that the main sources used had been correspondence to the Akaroa magistrate and the Roman Catholic Mission’s Akaroa archieves; Canterbury Museum archives; and persons giving information after seeing articles about the compilation. Many of the French who

had settled at Akaroa had| Come out as married couples in ships but they were formally married only after they arrived, said Mrs Mee. The origins of some of these settlers were hard to trace because they had not used their correct names. On Banks Peninsula there were once many whaling stations. As there was only a Roman Catholic mission at Akaroa, the records of bap-

tisnu. marriages, and deaths recorded, whalers and traders who were not Roman Catholics and who had come from places such as Ireland and North America.

Joseph Price was probably the earliest Canterbury settler on record, said Mrs Mee.

He had settled here in 1837 after arriving from Australia as a w’haler. He had previously visited New Zealand

from Sydney where he worked.

Mrs Mee said that she was surprised at the number of w’ornen and children who were named in the old records.

The Canterbury Public Library will photocopy the collated information and bind the sheets into a book for the public to see and to add fur. ther information.