Heritage > Local History

Special collections

Ephemera & poster collections:

Catch a glimpse of the past with our Ephemera and poster collections... (more about our Ephemera and Poster Collections)

Postcard collection

The Constable Collection is based around a series of Wellington postcards, most of which date from 1905 to 1914... (more about our Postcard collection)

Community histories

The Cuba Street Memories Project:

The Cuba Street Memories Project is the libraries' first collaborative history project. Help us build a history of Cuba Street online - share your memories and pictures of Cuba Street and contribute your knowledge of the area.

Oral histories

The Mervyn Kemp oral history:

Listen online. Ernest Mervyn Hall Kemp, was Mayor of the Tawa Borough Council for 28 years. These recordings were made in 1995 when Mervyn Kemp was 82 years old... (more about the Mervyn Kemp Oral History)

The Robert Bradford Williams oral history:

Robert Bradford Williams was an American-born immigrant who first arrived in Wellington in the late 1880s. He became a notable lawyer, music director and the longest serving Mayor of the Wellington Borough of Onslow. This oral history was recorded in 2010 with Jane Paul, Robert Bradford Williams' granddaughter... (more about the Robert Bradford Williams Oral History)

The Ohariu Valley oral history:

Stretching for 15 kilometres from Makara in the south to Tawa in the north, Ohariu Valley is a rural district on Wellington's urban doorstep. Feeling that the social history of the area deserved to be more widely known, Wellington City Libraries have captured some of the memories of current and former valley dwellers in this oral history project.... (more about the Ohariu Valley Oral History)

Thornton's Confectionary oral history:

For generations of young Wellingtonian's, one shop in the city stood above all others: Thornton's Confectionary based in Manners Street was Wellington's best known and loved manufacturing confectioner until it closed in 1948. In an era before processed snack foods or pre-packed sweets and chocolate bars, Thornton's supplied a huge variety of sugary treats to Wellington's citizens for nearly 70 years.... (more about the Thornton's Confectionary Oral History)

Digitised books

• The Streets of my city : Wellington, ..., Fanny L. Irvine-Smith (1948)
  An invaluable resource which records and explains street-names, preserving pioneer ships and their captains, early settlers, Māori places and people...
• The Land of Tara and they who settled it, Elsdon Best (1919)
  Reprinted in 1919 from the Journal of the Polynesian Society of New Zealand.
• The Rosanna Settlers, Hilda McDonnell (2002)
  In 1825 a group of Scottish settlers, though some were said to have been from Cumberland, sailed on the barque Rosanna from London with Captain Herd. They were part of a New Zealand Company venture planned to last three years.
• Notes on Port Nicholson and the Natives in 1839, Major Charles Heaphy
  Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 11th October, 1879.
• Twelve months in Wellington, by John Wood (1843)
  Published in London in 1843. [...] the author's primary purpose was to publish a damning critique of the New Zealand Company and to warn those who were considering emigrating of the likely difficulties and hardships.

See also...

There are more digitised books in our Te Whanganui-a-Tara pages, including Māori deeds of land purchases

Online databases

Our local history databases:

• Wellington Local History Database
  Primarily based around a collection of newspaper articles, dating back to the 1940s when the clipping and indexing of local newspapers first began at the Libraries...(more about the Wellington Local History Database)
• Evening Post clipping database, 1927-1977
  Contains several hundred thousand newspaper clippings collected between 1927 and 1977. It was originally assembled and maintained by Evening Post library staff... (more about the Evening Post clipping database)
• Master mariners' database
  New Zealand's master mariners were featured in a series of Evening Post articles in 1958-1959. The profiles were written by Sydney Waters and mainly deal with Union Steam Ship Company captains... (more about the Master Mariners' database)

Databases we subscribe to:

• ProQuest ANZ Newsstand
  This database offers full text access to national and provincial newspapers in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand titles include The Dominion Post... (more about the ProQuest database)