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I’m trying to put flesh on the names and dates in our family tree by telling people’s stories — writing from the clippings, diaries, letters, stories, family trees and photos our parents and grandparents left us, our own recollections and what I’ve found online. I admire these people and I’d hate to see them forgotten.

There are some good stories! — my father Cliff’s about the Depression and World War 2, my grandfather’s description of their lives as kauri bushmen, his two brothers who fought at Chunuk Bair, my grandmother’s brothers who died at Passchendaele, my father’s three uncles who died in a coal mining tragedy, my great-great grandmother’s diary from Whakatane in the 1890s, and the time that old Te Kooti came to visit. And much more, but still far more gaps than stories.

If you have feedback, corrections or can help fill in the gaps, please let me know in the comments.

This is family lore, not family history. By and large I haven’t tried to validate what they’ve left behind in the way a historian would, just passed it on, as they did for us. The old photos, faded and unfocused, don’t bother me. They remind us how time passes.

If I’ve commented or passed judgment occasionally, I hope it was the exception not the rule. I think that generally speaking a healthy society is one that’s proud of the people who built what it enjoys today. I’d rather ask whether our forbears would be proud of us than stand in judgment of them.