Keeping track of kith and kin

Hutt News | Tuesday, 18 November 2003, p39

Local News

Family Tree Detective

Genealogist Belly Pyne spends hundreds of hours a year gleaning information from her 13,000 microfiche and making up scrapbooks.  But not for herself.

She is one of the willing volunteers who assist others to research their own family histories.

Betty, a founder member of the Hutt Valley Branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, (and a life member), stood down at the recent annual meeting after being a committee member since 1986.

But she will still continue to collect obituaries from the local papers and keep researching projects, like the one for Kiwi World War One soldiers.  She has traced all their deaths and marriages and is now finding birth dates.

Methodical Betty, who still uses a typewriter for her work, says her research "keeps my brain ticking over".

She has a wealth of family stories to tell, including one from her husband's "tree" that is of interest to a lot of Kiwis.  When an Ada Retter married Robert Vaux Comport Harris, Robert's mother, born Lavinia Caroline Zinzan in Devon, England, insisted all first sons produced by Harris's should have the name of Zinzan.

Thus we have cricketer Chris Zinzan Harris.  (His father actually used the name for all three of his boys.)  Another branch married into the Brooke family - with rugby's Zinzan being a well-known descendant.

Betty (nee Borthwick -"but not the butcher ones") says her biggest frustration these days is the modern generation, who don't reply to the letters she writes to them to keep her files current.

Genealogy Interest High

With 200 members, Hutt Valley is the largest branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogy and has a permanent library of over 3,000 items of interest to family history.

The group meets monthly, every first Thursday in the mouth, February to December, at 7.30pm and every third Thursday January to November at 9.30am.  Regular research evenings are held the last Thursday of every month at 6.30pm when the library is opened.

The committee for 2004 is: Chair, Sandra Greig; secretary Deb Beban; treasurer Janet Ketchell; Auditor Graham Ryan; committee: editor Suzanne Sutton-Cumings [sic], membership officer Dianne Fitzgerald, Janice Price, William Clark, Lynn Gentry; librarian Pauline Innes, library committee Lynn Gentry, Sheila Clegg, Marie Perham; help desk Jan Walker.

For information contact Sandra on 586-0847.

[Editor's Note: Suzanne's surname is SUTTON-CUMMINGS.]