Being prompted to review very old research is F U N

Our local genealogy society, Kapiti Genealogy's, January meeting asked for attendees to bring Arrival stories.

This prompted me to find, and re-explore, my great grandfather William Henderson's notebook of the voyage from when he boarded the "William Davie" on the 9th of April 1872 through to his arrival in Port Chalmers then on to Dunedin, to end up in the barracks. 

A post script dated 1924 states that they had landed "on the street in front of what is now the Education Board office in Jetty Street"

What I would not have found without this prompt.

When I first read the notebook many years ago with the mention of an onboard newspaper, I idly wondered if any issues survived, particularly given that the notebook mentioned the Sub editor was a W Henderson.

Whether or not my William was the only W Henderson on board I know not, but he is the only one in the index of Assisted Passengers list in the Archives.

Which index does include a George Menzies, assumed to be the one William mentions below.

This re-read led me to a web search for "Ocean Times" and "William Davie", which brought up several references to my own webpages but also ...

these entries from the National Library of New Zealand.

The description of the manuscript as ... "Written in various hands (with corrections); attributed in part to Thomas Graham who may have been the editor"...

which latter does contradict the information in William's notebook highlighted in red below:

claiming that the editor was one George Menzies from Leadhills in Lanarkshire.

A George Menzies appears on Pg 16 of the Assisted Immigrants in the Archives, further research needed to conclusively identify George.

An "Ask the Librarian" query about the possibility to compare handwriting between the manuscript and the notebook brought a very prompt and helpful response, including scans of a few selected pages for my handwriting comparisons (along with a quote for official copies). Jury still well out on any of the handwriting.

One of the items included in the photocopy scans was the Directions detail included in Issue 2 - reading priorities very clear - it was to be available:

1) in the Cabin Thursday mornings

2) "the girls can have it by going to the Cabin Friday mornings"

3) the Main Hatch got it from the girls on Saturday mornings

4) the Sailors on Sunday

5) the Fore Hatch on Monday mornings

with an exhortation that "All are requested to keep it as clean as possible".

But it did at least survive the distribution instructions.

With many thanks to the National Library.

The notebook.

It's an unpreposessing simple black notebook:

Diary of William Henderson's voyage of the
'William Davie" 9 Apr to Jul 1872

Pgs 1 & 2 9 April 1872

The few names mentioned are transcribed on my web page of the voyage, which includes a link to the map following the Latitude and Longitude values recorded for each day - or at least it did, the actual map and values appear to have vanished - something I would not have noticed without being prompted by the January meeting's theme "Arrival stories".

On my lengthy to-do list is now to get the scanned pages of the notebook into FamilySearch Memories section for William