By James Tait

My family knew I loved history and was inquisitive, tenacious, and possessed attention to detail along with an interest in mysteries, puzzles, and solving problems. With these qualities and interests, they thought I would enjoy researching our family’s history, so they gifted me an Ancestry.com membership for Christmas in 2018.

I had a trip planned to Port Chalmers, Otago, New Zealand, a few weeks later to help a maternal family member to move and settle into the area. Whilst there, I found several links to the city on my paternal side. I had heard there was a stained-glass window dedicated to my ancestors in the local church, but I could never have imagined that I would find numerous references and pieces of history relating to many generations of my family. It transpired our connection to this area stretched back to the arrival of my 4th Great-grandfather from Scotland when the ‘Philip Lang’ docked in Port Chalmers in 1848.

The Iona Presbyterian church:

• There was a stained-glass window dedicated to my ancestors, but I could not believe it was part of the reredos (altarpiece) that honoured my family!
• There was also a marble plaque that commemorated my 2nd Great-grandfather, an elder at the church for 47 years.
• My Great-granduncle is listed on the World War One memorial board.
• The cemetery in the church grounds had a monument with birth, death, and marriage information on numerous generations of my ancestors.

Port Chalmers Maritime Museum:

• My 2nd Great-grandfather is mentioned on one link on the Borough of Port Chalmers mayoral chain.

Box of Birds (Second-hand shop):

• Whilst wandering around the small town, I happened upon a tiny shop and was amazed to pull out a family photo of another 2nd Great-granduncle and his family from a random display containing hundreds!

I was fortunate to find numerous articles on my ancestors in ‘PapersPast’ which gave me locations of my ancestors’ homes, of which some were still standing.
I was there for 3 days, and I seemed to discover new information everywhere I went.

Furthermore, I felt a profound feeling of social connection and that I was part of something much larger than myself. I was literally walking in their steps nearly 200 years later. As I learnt about my forebears, I gained a new perspective on my life, existence, and the world around me. Furthermore, my self-awareness changed, and focusing on my problems suddenly seemed largely insignifi cant and a waste of the small amount of time I have on this earth.

Whānau and whakapapa are key concepts in the Maori people of New Zealand’s culture. Whānau encompass several generations of one’s family, and it’s ‘through the whānau that values, histories, and traditions from the ancestors are adapted for the contemporary world.’ It includes physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Whakapapa describes the line of descent from ancestors down to the present day (genealogy) and links people to all other living things, the earth, and the sky, all whilst tracing the universe back to its origins. I felt that I now had an understanding of these concepts and why they are so important and valuable to everyone today. I realised I wanted to commit to researching and helping other people discover their family’s history because I wanted them to have the experience I just had. Genealogy can be described as the ‘science of studying family history.’ I take this to mean that it incorporates many fi elds of history, such as social history, and the research process I learnt from my science background is crucial to genealogical research as well. Specifi cally, the importance of precision, organisation, thoroughness, and analysis of information.

In 2019, I began volunteering at the National Library of New Zealand FamilySearch desk and started researching for the ‘Fromelles Association of Australia.’ This association assists in identifying and honouring soldiers who fought and lost their lives near Fromelles, France, during World War I. My role was to research soldiers who were born in New Zealand but enlisted in the Australian army. One of these soldiers was Henry Oscar NELSON. Whilst I was researching him, I became aware of the ‘Wellington War Memorials Project.’ This project’s goal was to tell the story of every World War 1 soldier memorialised on war memorials throughout Wellington, New Zealand. It turned out they needed one fi nal soldier’s story to fi nish the project, and together we were able to confi rm that this soldier was Henry Oscar Nelson.

After completing a short course at Victoria University, Wellington, in Oral History in 2019, I was accepted into the Postgraduate Certifi cate in Genealogical, Palaeographic & Heraldic Studies at the University of Strathclyde. I completed this course in 2023, and since then, I have been working towards becoming a professional genealogist. In 2025, I gained accreditation with the ‘Australasian Association of Genealogists and Record Agents’ as a Record Agent and recently, I launched a record retrieval business named RAPID Heritage. RAPID Heritage’s goal is to be a conduit for people to learn about New Zealand’s heritage, with the aim to help people discover and access records quickly, cheaply, and easily.