Te Puke genealogy group celebrates 40 years since first meeting

Cutting the cake at the Te Puke branch of the NZ Genealogy Society's 40th birthday are group founder Fay Campbell and fellow national society life member Bobby Mawkes.

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Genealogists rely heavily on archived documentation.

So it's no surprise that the Te Puke branch of the New Zealand Genealogy Society still has the hand written minutes of its first meeting called by Fay Campbell.

The meeting was on April 28, 1978 and, as the minute book records, annual subs were set at $1.50.

Fay was at Te Puke Citizens RSA last week when the branch celebrated its 40th anniversary.

In 1978 the national society was a decade old and Fay was a member of the Tauranga branch.

"I thought I'd see if people in Te Puke would like to form a group, so I put a notice in the newspaper," she says.

There was plenty of interest with 13 people turning up to that first meeting and 17 apologies.

"Research is very different now to what it was 40 years ago," says Fay. "Whereas before it was all very personal, now it more impersonal because everyone is doing it on the internet."

At one time there were around 80 branches, but in recent times that number has dwindled and there is no longer a branch in Tauranga.

"Our own branch had a big membership by the time we had its 20th anniversary," says Fay. "We had a bus trip every year to Wellington, Hamilton or Auckland where the repositories were and we'd have wonderful days away doing research and if someone had a good find, we'd all be pleased, as if it was our own."

Fay has traced her own family back to the 1700s through her Scottish father and English mother, although she no longer researches as her eyesight is deteriorating.

"But if I was still doing it, I'd be doing it the old fashioned way."

Fay looked after the national society's ever-growing stock of overseas magazines for many years and Te Puke branch member Bobby Mawkes ran its postal library for 16. They are both life members.

"There aren't a lot of life members, so to have two in the same branch is quite unusual," says Fay.

The branch meets on the fourth Thursday of the month in the meeting room in Te Puke Library and Service Centre with the morning generally given over to research and a guest speaker in the afternoon. There is also an opportunity to carry out research on each second Saturday of the month at the same venue.

"It's not all done on the internet, because not everything's on the internet and not everything on the internet is correct," says branch convener Mark McKinney.

He says meeting up gives members the chance for personal interaction and to share suggestions.