Heritage > Recommended Websites

These are some key Wellington local history sites. There are further recommended links in other sections of our site, for example Genealogy, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Kid's Catalog Wellington links.

Genealogy:

GenWeb
The main purpose of this Wellington site is to bring together the genealogical sources of the Wellington area to help with your family research. Also contains links to key other sites.
Helen's page of NZ history
Focusing mainly on Wellington and the lower North Island, this growing site contains early Wellington directories, passenger lists and a mine of other local history information.
Early Wellington electoral rolls (1850s)
Early electoral information, mainly from the 1850s.
Wellington Almanack
Wellington Trade and Street Directories from 1864, 1865 and 1866.

Museum of Wellington
Preserving, presenting and promoting Wellington's heritage, harbour, city & sea.
Archives NZ
A wealth of information is housed in government records.
Wellington City Archives
Information about the activities and functions of Wellington City Council since its establishment (and therefore the development of Wellington city).
Te Papa
New Zealand's National Museum.

Kilbirnie/Lyall Bay oral history project
Seven long-term residents of Kilbirnie and Lyall Bay in Wellington talk about the dramatic physical and social changes they've witnessed in this area of Wellington since the 1920s.

Timeframes
A photographic database from the National Library. Timeframes includes selected New Zealand and Pacific images from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, the research library within the National Library of New Zealand.
Matapihi
"Matapihi is a window onto the online collections of a number of New Zealand cultural organisations."

National Library
Although having a national focus, the National Library's website, catalogues and web directory include local sources.
- National Library catalogue
- National Library's Wellington web directory

Papers Past
This is another National Library initiative. Papers available (some incomplete) include:
- Evening Post (1865-1915)
- New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser (1842-1843)
- New Zealand Free Lance (1900-1909)
- New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator (1839-1844)
- New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian (1844-1865)
- Wellington Independent (1860-1874)
Proquest
Proquest is one of our online databases and offers full text, searchable access to national and provincial newspapers in Australia and New Zealand.
Electronic Text Centre
Fully searchable. Try browsing the Wellington search, or read specific sources such as:
- Early Wellington, by Louis Ward
- New Zealand's Burning: the settler's world in the mid 1880s, by Rollo Arnold. Chapter 7 includes Wellington province. Also, Chapter 14 discusses Port Nicholson 1885, Wellington as 'head' port of the 'Cook Strait lake', and Wellington as the main interprovincial node.
Te Ao Hou
Te Ao Hou was published from 1952 to 1976 by the Māori Affairs Department in New Zealand Aotearoa. According to its first editorial, Te Ao Hou aimed "to provide interesting and informative reading ...where all questions of interest to the Maori can be discussed."