Family History Month 2025
This Family History Month we're highlighting some key resources at Wellington City Libraries that can help uncover your ancestry or whakapapa.
What resources can I access from home?
With an increase in digitised materials and powerful search tools, online databases have become an essential starting point for researchers.
These pages compile whakapapa resources and include indexes to Nga Tūpuna and book lists relevant to different iwi or rohe.
These pages point to online resources specific to our whenua. Māori land records and deeds in particular can be useful tools.
Sometimes referred to as the 'pioneer roll', this collection of documents compiles some 52,000 names of Wellington residents from 1840 to 1855. It is especially valuable for tracing early European settlers to the region.
What about within the library?
Our library branches all hold books about local history, and items can be ordered between branches. Some of our non-book offerings include:
Family history websites
The library offers free access to both Ancestry.com and Find My Past. These databases hold millions of records and can logged into with your library card. Usage is limited to within our libraries.
Historic newspapers
A selection of our newspaper collection is available at Taonga Tuku Iho, our heritage centre at Cummings Park Library. Here you can find microfilm of The Evening Post (1946 - 2002) and the subsequent Dominion Post from 2002 onwards. These are incredibly valuable for their family notice sections, including obituaries.
This is just a very small selection of our resources! For a more in-depth guide to family history at Wellington City Libraries visit our genealogy page.
Want to find out more?
Our heritage team has put together a family history workshop which will focus on online resources. These events will be held at Mervyn Kemp (Tawa) Library on the 23rd and 28th of August. Registrations are essential.
For more information see our event calendar: