Names project a ‘fantastic job’

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 7

Names project a ‘fantastic job’

Two Christchurch women! had done “a most fantastic 1 job” of finding and authenti-i eating the names of 981! European settlers in Canter- i bury before 1850, the Christ-! church City Council’s cul-l tural. committee has been] told. ’ Mrs Anne Mee and Mrs! Beth Colwell, both members of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists’ Canterbury group, had produced “remarkable results, far beyond what we anticipated,” the committee’s chairman (Cr Helen Garrett) said. Their voluntary work was done for a special sub-com-mittee on pre-Adamite set- : tlement. Names had been! put- on hand-written cards,; Cr Garrett said, along with; biographical sketches. The cards have been given to the Canterbury Museum] Library. Copies have gone to! the Canterbury Public Lib-] rary, the Akaroa Museum, 1 and' the Alexander Turnbull Library.

A few more names are recorded throughout the country, and are still being researched. About $lOOO has been received or promised for the building of a plinth in Cathedral Square that would commemorate Maori settlers in Canterbury before the Europeans came. The plinth, in the -Four Ships Court, might, cost about $3750 to build, and councillors agreed that money needed could come from estimates if continued fund-raising did not work. Cr Garrett said that cards containing information about early European settlers might be displayed in the, new Canterbury Public Library. She said the work had] “outstanding historical] merit.”