BI-MONTHLY NEWSLETTER Nov - Dec 2026
Our latest Bugle: Volume 40 number 4 is now available

Hi everyone. Update time again.

Family History Expo
We again had a stall at the Family History Expo. It was great to catch up with
some of our members who attended. The new venue at Kings College was a
much larger venue with much better facilities. It was great that I was able to
stay in one of the boarding houses. Our stall was busy both days and we have
already had new members join our society. 
The Expo is a great opportunity to promote the work that we do. This year I was
involved as part of a panel on “Finding Your Military Connections” and I also
did a lecture on our database.

Database
The website continues to be generating membership as again 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 93,000. There is so much information out there to be gathered. Thanks
to an attendee at the Expo we acquired more information about two men from
the 48 th Regiment, Hugh CLELAND we already had but the second man, David
ANDERSON was a new addition to our list. One of his daughters, Ellen, was
the second wife of Premier Hon. John BALLANCE

Website
Work continues to provide additional research material on the website.

Ship Records
We now have details for seven of the ten Fencible ships. The remaining three
will be covered in the next few issues of the Bugle.

British Regiments in NZ
This category provides a list of articles in our magazines about the British Army
Regiments that served in the NZ Wars. So far we have details for eleven of the
fourteen regiments listed. The remaining three will be added shortly.

Other British Regiment
As above this also provides a list of articles in our magazines about many other
regiments in the British army. 

Beatrice RYAN’s Thesis
We have been given permission to digitise Beatrice’s 1935 thesis “Military
Settlements in Early Auckland” It provides a good background to the Fencible
settlements and the impact the pensioners had on Auckland. Hopefully it will be
online before Christmas.

Fencible dossier data input
Work continues with this project. It is time consuming and continues to slowly
progress, particularly when I come across a dossier which has sizeable family
tree material that has to be loaded onto the database. This happened when I
worked on the McCRORY dossier. These dossiers help us to grow the number
of names on the database. We will shortly begin work on the N’s.

Empire Veterans.
Don’t forget to spread the word that our database doesn’t just cover the
Fencibles. 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 make
contact with other researchers please spread the word.

End of Year Event
We have arranged a visit to the Research Centre at the Auckland Central
Library at 1.30 pm on the 28 th November. We have requested that the person
conducting the tour put an emphasis on the military resources they have. The
tour will also include viewing material from the Heritage Collection. For
those interested we have also arranged to meet for lunch 12 o’clock at the
Honey Café (same building as the library). 
Both the library and the café have requested numbers
attending. Please email me if you are attending the library visit
and if you will be joining us for lunch in the café.

CATCH A TRAIN. If you live reasonably close to a railway station park your car nearby and catch the train to Te Waihorotiu. It is an easy walk from there to the Library.

garphh@gmail.com 

Finally for those of you who I won’t be catching up with on the 28th I would like to
wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 
Garth