Media: DATA CD - 1 CD (2018 pages)
Author: H. Wise
Year: (1900) 2007
ISBN: 9781921230578
Publisher: Archive Digital Books Australasia

Directories are a valuable resource for local, family and social historians as well as for researchers in other fields of New Zealand history. Directories are an extremely useful tool for establishing when and where a person lived however this is just a starting point, look further in the directory to find out more information about the society in which they lived, the occupation they held and the people they knew.

Directories in New Zealand fulfilled three main functions: to boost the local and regional economy by bringing producer and consumer together; to provide a compendium of useful information to benefit the local population as well as the would-be migrant; and to create in printed format a resource which would help meld isolated communities together.

Henry Wise produced his first national directory 'Wise's New Zealand Commercial Directory' in 1872-73. In 1881, Wise won permission to refer to his directory as the official New Zealand Post Office Directory. Wise's continued to publish their mammoth directories in a single volume until the mid-1950s.

Information for the three main sections of Towns Business Directory, Alphabetical Directory, and Trades Directory (the alphabetical list of names, the names attached to the list of occupational headings, and the streets directory) was acquired by means of a house-to-house canvass of the country's metropolitan areas and of homes in the surrounding countryside. As a general rule (which may vary between directories), the name of the head of the household was listed, as well as male lodgers aged 18 years and over (21 years in some cases). The spouse was excluded unless he or she owned property on his or her own account, as were children over the age of 15, even if they were in the workforce. Those who only rented property were also usually excluded.

You will find information on all the facilities that New Zealand had in 1900, such as schools and universities, banks, companies, medical and legal persons, all the various government departments, customs information, railway department,
even the various societies in the country.

This enormous volume of over 2000 pages, is packed full of useful information on the people and towns of New Zealand as they were in 1900. Ideal not only as a research tool for genealogists, but also for social historians.

Originally produced by Archive CD Books Australia in 2006, this title has now been remastered and re-released, and includes better searching capability. This CD contains high quality scanned images of the whole of the original book, and has been bookmarked for easy navigation. Pages can be searched, browsed, enlarged and printed out if required.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Any computer using Adobe (Acrobat) Reader 4 or later
Adobe Reader 6 or later is recommended for CDs with searchable text

SAMPLE FILE
Click here to download a file of sample pages from this book. Right click on the link and select "save as" - to a location on your hard drive. The sampler can be opened, navigated and searched as with the full CD file/s.Sample files usually contain the title page, contents, some introductory pages and sample pages from the body of the book. Often the complete index from the original book is included.