Day 8
Today was actually really nice and slow except for not being
able to find the one thing that was vital to my survival all day. I am not
talking about food, but the Melbourne Cup. Every pub and gaming house I entered
did not have a TAB and could either say no they didn’t know where one was or
gave very vague hand signals to where one actually was. I was not happy that I couldn’t
find one, but my day turned out to be something way better than betting on the
cup.
My plan for the day was to first visit the museum and then
head to the archive research library that is just up the hill from the museum
in Wanganui. The plan worked well with the coffee I began the day with and some
light teasing from the coffee van guy. I actually had half hour wait as they
opened at 10am and not 930. I wasn’t in too much of a hurry and just on 10am I
had a nice surprise. It seems the bells that I had seen are not a static
display, but do really chime and the chime is actually really musical. The ladies
in the museum were really helpful when I explained what I was after and one of
the ladies even bought around a print out from the newspaper online at papers
past, the NZ equivalent to Trove.
The museum was helpful and I even found plenty of
information especially when I found things about what the city was like and
included information on the person I was looking for, William Hogg Watt and his
business he partnered with TB Taylor. They had Australian connections too
especially when their first ship was made in Australia around the 1840s. The
streets were at first unpaved and were dusty in the dry and muddy in the wet.
There were stories of people getting stuck in the mud up to their waist. The
Maori exhibit told me there were four women who signed the treaty of Waitangi
and one of them I think was from the Wanganui area.
After wandering
around and learning about the local area I was then ready to visit the archives,
where they were expecting me although I did apologise for being late and they
were cool with that. They had some family history in the archives that included
two articles on the drowning of Margaret whose boat ‘Avalanche’ collided with
another in England and sank. Another was a navigation book that was written by
William Hogg Watt and was full of navigation and working out formulas for his
travels. I think i recognised some as longitude and latitude co ordinates, A letter
written to William from another bloke and this was actually the original
letter. I was careful to put this away. The last was an A2 sheet with around 5
pages listing the family of W.H. Watt. This included my great, great aunt and I
was able to let the archivist know that the information provided was actually
wrong. I was pleased that I was able to correct the information, but will have
to get in touch with the people involved with the family tree. The archivist
was happy and when we were ready to copy, I was taken through the archive out
the back with their holdings. Not everything was back there though and I did
explain that I was studying uni too. She did give me a business card too and
told me that I can contact them with any questions I may have. I did ask about
the various local wars and there are publications out there, but the museum
book store is a little low at the moment.
After lunch, I then visited the Alexander archive and
research library. I was given plenty of information yet again and I was reading
plenty of books about the area including one that was from the 1970s, I think
it was or even earlier. This book on Wanganui was actually the better book on
the area and scholarly too. I learnt more about William H, John Paton and the
other characters in the local area. What I thought was a mistake that I found
with a Milverton was not actually. I couldn’t read the daughter card thing
properly. Yes I was not getting my information from the internet, my
information came from the information card system that sent you to what you
were looking for and abbreviations of the publication. I found someone had done
research into the Wanganui rifles during the 1800s and this gave me some
nuggets alright. A book written about ‘The Watt’ memorial in town. I did not
get everything copied as it was too much for one man to carry around the
country. I do have page numbers down and all should be good though and I have
learnt that with the papers past I can do a locality search instead as it would
be better. I had done a nationwide so this is a new tip for me. I have contact
details to get in touch with several people about their own research and I
would be happy to trade information with them.
Tomorrow I am off to Wellington, where I will continue with
LOTR tours and more family history research including hopefully a tour through
the Beehive.
Highlight
Learning that not all newspapers are dailys. I found some interesting information about the Boar War in 1881, although I did have a problem with the microfilm and loaded it the wrong way. The writing was different as it was more formal than it was today.
Tip
Dont forget to have a look through the local supermarket as
you may need to find something as a snack for your breakfast
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