Ms Lowe, Principal of Newlands Intermediate, asked the whole school to research Newlands history.

Why we did it

Ms Lowe, the Principal of Newlands Intermediate, asked the whole school to research Newlands history. We wanted to research the soldiers who lived in Newlands and served in WW1 to learn about the people behind the surnames. If they died in WW1, if they married and how they lived and died. But we also wanted to extend this project a bit more. Instead of just doing soldiers, we started researching their families, Newlands streets, Ngauranga Gorge, people who had lived in Newlands and a small section about the treatment of Māori soldiers in WW1. Mainly, we wanted to learn about the soldiers who have lived in Newlands, what happened throughout their lives, when they were in Newlands, or still in war and how they died. Because of our keen interest in history, we tried to correct a few errors in the online memorials by telling the community to fix them.

Errors on the War Memorial 

While looking through to find more information about the soldiers, we found out that there were a few mistakes about some soldiers, like how the memorial had the wrong name written on it because it had the same initials as another soldier. This happened while researching James Clifford Clarke when searching for him in Find a Grave and the Auckland Cenotaph when it didn’t have the letter “E” at the end of Clarke. On the Newlands Memorial, it is inscribed ‘Clark”, resulting in an online memorial to John Cameron Clark, who was born in Scotland and lived in Taranaki. Because of this big mistake, the teacher sent a letter to the Wellington Memorial Committee telling them they had the wrong Clarke written on their grave. An email has been sent to them, but they haven’t replied. Another email was sent to the Porirua Cemetery about Thomas Mahoney, who previously had not been identified as having anything to do with the war but, as we found out, was a war veteran. They replied by emailing us to say that they sent the Remembrance Army to clean up his grave, put a poppy on it and remember him in ANZAC memorials at the cemetery.

Auckland Cenotaph 

Auckland Cenotaph was the first site we looked through to find the soldiers because they held the National Records of the soldiers, where we could find their war number, birth date, where they were born and death date. The Auckland Cenotaph also had some of the soldiers' ranks in war and past service records and if they served in war or not.

Research tools

To actually find out the soldiers' past history, we mainly looked through websites such as Wellington Memorial to find out the name, birth date and death date and Find a Grave to search who their parents were and if they had any siblings. If these websites didn’t have what we needed, we looked into Family Trees on Ancestry.com, which tells us who their ancestors were and if they had any children. Most soldiers' families were easily found through these websites, but if they weren't on them, we skimmed through a few books that also contained their family history. The book we used to research about the families also had what part of Newlands the soldiers' families owned and a little bit about when the family settled onto the land and dates of when some soldiers’ siblings were born.

Family trees and Newlands community

While researching about the soldiers, we also found out that most were related to each other as brothers, uncles, and nephews. Later on, we found out that some were brothers-in-law because their sister had married. Digging in deeper, we also worked on finding out if the soldiers had married and had any kids or grandkids. Later on, we looked into what the Newlands community was like in the early days, like when schools were being built or what primary the soldiers went to in their much younger days before serving in war. Being a small but social community, Newlands only had about 25 houses in the 1930s, but everyone worked together and formed a tight, social community.

By Justina Chu and Elsie Saunders