BI-MONTHLY NEWSLETTER Jul – Aug 2026
Hi everyone. Time for an update again.
I would like to start by asking some questions about our website. We would appreciate some feed-back, as a considerable time and effort is being put in to developing it. Are you using it? Is it useful? Is it helping your research? Are you looking at the back issues of the Bugle? Are the indexes useful? Have you looked at the research guides? Will you make use of it if we make more resources available? Do you have any suggestions as to how we can make it better? If you haven’t checked it out please do so and let us know what you think.
AGM
We had a successful AGM, all be it with a slightly smaller attendance. It is good to know that we continue to operate successfully. Our membership has increased by 39 over the year ending with a total membership of 189. Our finances are good with income covering the on-going running costs. The existing committee members were re-elected except for the Treasurer’s position but Glenda willing agreed to take on the role. It does mean we are one councillor short. If there is anyone interested in joining the committee please let us know. All our decisions are done by email so it isn’t necessary to live in Auckland.
Rusell CARTER gave an interesting talk about his family connection with the 58th Regiment and his attendance at the Ruapekapeka 180th Commemorations
Panmure Library
There has been a change with the location of our resources in the library. We have been relocated to a room on the ground floor. The resources willcontinue to be available at our open/research day and by appointment at other times. As the info on our database expands there should be less need to access the resources. AGM attendees were able to check out the new arrangement.
NZ Ancestor Search Helper (ASH)
Our List of Fencible Names has been added to this major website. It is a free one-stop shop website for family research that has been created by Lower Hutt web developer Luke Howison. There will be an article all about the site in the Sep-Oct Bugle. Since we added the list we have seen a big increase in the number of hits our website is getting. Having our list on this site is part of our plan to spread the word about our own website. You can help by spreading the word about what our website has to offer, particularly that we are not just about the Fencibles..
Website/Database Update
The website continues to be generating membership as can be seen by the number of names recorded in the Member Interest List on the back page of The Bugle.
The number of individual names on the database continues to grow and is now almost at 90,500. We are keen to receive family trees from members to add to the database. In particular we are keen to grow the Empire Veteran side
Recently we loaded three research guides, two for the Public Records Office (PRO) UK and one for Archives NZ. These guides cover sources for researching military personnel. We are currently looking at making available next the Surgeons Reports and Ship Journals that we have in our collection. This is part of our policy to make more of our resources available online.
Fencible dossier data input
Work continues with this project. It is time consuming and is going to take a bit longer to complete, particularly when I come across a dossier which has sizeable family tree material that has to be loaded onto the database. These dossiers help us to grow the number of names on the database. We have just begun working on the Mc’s. The M’s took quite a long time as there was a break of about a month while we finished creating indexes for the Bugle.
The Bugle
A complete set of Bugles with indexes is available on line. They contain some wonderful articles about a wide range of topics relating to the Fencible story. If your Fencible has been written about some time ago it may need a new article to set the record straight. Many hours have been spent doing the indexing, so we hope they will get used.
Empire Veterans:
Finding names for previously unrecorded vets, new family members and supporting documentation continues. It is interesting just how we come across new names for the list. In his talk Russell mentioned Cpl John CHERRINGTON of the 58th.I found he wasn’t on the database, following some checking online I added 34 new names to the database.
The Empire Veterans group has huge potential for society membership. It is important we let people know our database has been expanded to include the Empire Veteran men. I hope as this becomes more widely known descendants and military researchers will join us to make use of our database. For those of you who are NZSG members and you attend group meetings please spread the word about the database.
Comng Events
Auckland Family History Expo 2026
Friday 9 October to Sunday 11 October 2026, King's College, 41 Golf Avenue, Ōtāhuhu, Auckland 1062
We’re delighted to share updates about the Auckland Family History Expo 2026,which will take place over three exciting days in October. The Expo brings together family historians, genealogists, industry organisations, and researchers from across New Zealand, Australia and beyond.
This is a much larger venue, with better parking, closer rail access with Middlemore station just down the road within easy walking distance. We are hoping to do presentations about our database on both days.
Garth