BY HEIDI CLAPHAM
While most of us are thinking about what tomorrow brings, Isobel Coulsten of Winifred Street loves to immerse herself in yesterday.
As part of her big interest in things historic, Isobel is currently busy with an ongoing local project researching and archiving old school admission records in the Gisborne, East Coast and Wairoa areas for the New Zealand Society of Genealogists.
The work she does for the society is all voluntary and just recently her efforts were recognised with a merit award for her long service to the Gisborne branch.
Isobel has been a member of the local genealogical group since 1982, including a period as chairperson between 1988 and 1991.
The award says Isobel has continued to give “so much to genealogy” and has been “an inspiration to all members of the Gisborne branch”.
At age 88, Isobel works long and hard with fellow team members, Dot McCullough and Warwick Ingoe, delving deep into this district’s educational history.
Isobel describes the work she undertakes as ‘a permanent job’ and ‘absolutely time consuming’.
The team travels all over the district to visit the schools, many of them in remote parts of the East Coast and out as far as Lake Waikaremoana. Their task is to locate old documents – often stored in lofts, some even discovered in trash heaps, and often so ancient they need to be handled with extreme care. Many of the records are from schools long closed, with their records passed on to neighbouring schools.
Scrawled in writing across these books are names, admission dates, departure dates and general notes. Invaluable information for people researching their family history.
The information is photocopied, then sent to Auckland where it is inputted and stored in the New Zealand society’s head office archives. When finalised, the data is prepared in book form and presented back to each school involved. The project has been going on for over 10 years, with 136 schools in the area so far investigated.
Along the way Isobel and the team have been able to uncover and observe many interesting historic influences and socio-economic trends from the records. For example, many pupils from Omaru Mutu School (just before Opotiki) left school to join Te Kooti’s rebellion in the 1850s, while others left to follow the prophet Rua Kenana to the independent religious community at Maungapohatu in the Urewera wilderness between 1908-1910.
During the 1930s many pupils died while still at school, fatally infected by TB, measles or chicken pox brought into remote locations by European settler families.
They also noted that most children in schools on the East Coast between the years 1962 and 1971 left school to ‘milk the cows’ and children out at Te Karaka left to ‘join shearing gangs’.
After World War 2, children’s Christian names such as Alamein, Egypt and Cassino started appearing in the records.
Isobel’s favourite – twins’ names, ‘Tahi’ and ‘Rua’.
Isobel says she has always been interested in history, in particular her own family history. As a young person she asked her mother for information about her grand parents but says no one had the time to focus on family history back then – so in later years she sought to find her own answers.
Along with work for the Society, she has spent may hours investigating her family’s history on both sides and as a result has published detailed history books, which she has presented as gifts to family members.
Isobel has lived at Wainui for the past eight years and has close family ties with the community. Her sister May married Bill Ferris, of the well-known Ferris family of Wainui. And her son Daren Coulston, his wife Linda and her grandchildren Hana, Te Wai and Lucy live beside her in their family home overlooking the bay on Winifred Street.
