Grabbing history from jaws of obscurity

Press, 28 February 1980, Page 12

Grabbing history from jaws of obscurity

By

STAN DARLING

Too much local. history is in danger of going astray through mislaid, inaccessible and ignored records, according to an 81-year-old Riccarton historian. Mrs Sadie Penney, a former head of the St Margaret’s College history department, is still hard at work trying to preserve history. Her. special study is piled high with boxes of “Lake Ellesmere to Te Pirita,” a history of Ellesmere County published late last year. She started research on the book only a few months after another big project, “Beyond the City” (Riccarton, Waimairi and Paparua histories), published in 1977.

“I was getting fed up with nothing to do,” she said. “I’ve always been busy.”

It has not been an easy job, and has meant driving around the countryside, seeing people, as well and dredging through old records.

Trying to read handwriting in old minute books may have been the hardest part. About 10 years of former Springs County history is locked up in

handwriting that cannot be read. The county clerk apparently had eye trouble, and his meticulous if indecipherable penmanship got worse as he got older. While spending "a good, solid year” tracking down material for the 262-page history, Mrs Penney would

often drive into the country at 9 a.m. and not be home before 8 pan. in the winter, with a 'meal still to prepare for her husband and foster son. That son has been her writing partner on a series of university entrance examination histories started in 1970. He is Graeme Ash, head of the Christchurch Boys’ High School history department. Many illustrations and maps for Mrs Penney’s books have been done by another son, Graeme Penney. The books, the first of their kind in New Zealand to combine teaching experience with modern testing methods in senior history, are still being ordered by schools.

They were a way of. getting around the tedious chore of writing detailed notes. On blackboards, and having students copy them. Mrs Penney hopes the Canterbury history books, more than just long lists of family names, can also be used by seventh form students now able to make

particular studies of local topics. After retiring in 1972 after 28 years at St Margaret’s, Mrs Penney wanted to write about her father, who had been 60 years old when she was born/ She found that a lot of Old newspapers she needed had been destroyed. Others existed only on microfilm, in the National Library at Wellington. “It is not only expensive, it’s annoying this hardship of trying to delve into New Zealand history,” she said. Early county records in part of the Ellesmere area had been destroyed in a fire, and others seem to have been dumped after later amalgamations. “When that ’happens,

where is y.our history?” she said. “1 feel as if we are not doing nearly enough justice to these old people, and the work they did.”

Mrs Penney said there were gaps in records of public bodies, sports groups, clubs and school committees.

Some history has to be of the “Oh. that reminds me” type. That may not be too reliable, but is sometimes all that is left.

“Probably, I should have taken five or 10 years on this Ellesmere history,” she said. “But it is better to put together what you can, while you have time.

“I also have ideas on other things. The information has to be gathered, otherwise it’s gone. “I hunted all over for a map of the oldest water races. Somebody must have some copies, somewhere. It is very difficult to know where to turn.”

Mrs Penney said her activies were sedentary, but her record shows that her life has been far from one with a lot of sitting down. She does most of her own typing, except at the end,-when printers are waiting for a book.

Her Penney Ash Publications pays the full cost of publication, then hopes for the best in sales. Parts of the Ellesmere book were contributed by other writers. Dr Lance McCaskill did a chapter on Lake Ellesmere birds, and Michael Trotter, the Canterbury Museum’s archaeologist and principal curator, wrote a section on the area’s pre-history.