Forgotten Records

Northland Age, Volume 5, Issue 23, 6 March 1936, Page 1

Forgotten Records

Need for Preserving the Early Records of our Di&ritft

In the Church Chronicle for this month the vicar, Rev. E. Blackwood Moore, states, in connection with his request that those in possession of facts concerning church building in this district would furnish him with these notes, that matters that seem unimportant to people at the time become matters of history, but so often no records are kept, and they are relegated to the limbo of forgotten things. As the older people lay down their earthly tasks many of the oral records go with them. The foregoing is penned in connection with the records of St. Andrew’s Church, Mangonui, one of the few remaining Selwyn churches in an excellent state of preservation, which was built 60 years ago, and will this month celebrate the diamond jubilee of its erection, and of St. Saviour’s Church building in Kaitaia which was erected 49 years ago, and will next year celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. A church has, of course, stood on the present site for over 100 years. These remarks of the vicar apply to the records of all the activities of this, one of the oldest inhabited districts in New Zealand, as the material available for writing of the early days here is very meagre. The records of the various organisations in the district are also scanty, the majority of the early ones being lost, being in the eyes of the then officials, of no value It is said of one of the early secretaries of a local organisation that he was wont to say “These records will not be wanted again so they might as well be burnt”, and too often they were burnt. This loss of records sometimes leads to difficult and involved legal searching, as is now shown by the loss of the minute book of the old Kaitaia library committee, and the difficulty that the Town Board is experiencing in obtaining a legal title to the old library building. It is hoped that persons who possess records of any organisation or of the activities of this district during the years that have passed, will see that they are preserved, and the various local organisations should arrange that all their available records are kept in a fireproof and rat-proof place, as rats have played their part in destroying records of at least one association in this district.

The claim that the legislation to be brought down by the Labour Government would make this country the most advanced for its social laws in the British Empire, if not in the world, was made by the Minister for Employment and Labour, the Hon. H. T. Armstrong, when he was speaking at a complimentary social tendered to Mrs. Armstrong and himself by Christchurch East electors. A close association between New Zealand, Australia and South Africa to meet the increasing competition from Argentina is urged by the deputy director of agriculture in South Australia, Mr. W. J. Spafford, who recently toured South America, South Africa and New Zealand investigating agricultural conditions. “Unless America renounces her naval policy aimed at the expansion and protection of her foreign trade, Japan will be forced to extend her fleet’s cruising radius to New Guinea, Celebes and Borneo, and to establish footholds in Formosa and the mandated South Sea Islands.”—Admiral Takahashi.