Members of the Top of the South history group travelled from all over New Zealand to Rabbit Island on Saturday to have a picnic and a face-to-face catch up.
The group has almost 11,000 members world-wide, not bad for a group that concentrates on history in Nelson, Stoke, Richmond, Motueka, Golden Bay and surrounding areas.
Started in 2018 by Brian McIntyre, who is head of a team of volunteers cleaning the headstones at the Wakapuaka Cemetery, the history group grew out of another Facebook page when it was decided there was enough interest in local history.
The history group has a strong link with the Wakapuaka Cemetery. Merrin Hodgson (Hoddy), an early member of the group, answered a call for volunteers to clean the headstones.
“We were originally putting photos of headstones on a history of Nelson page, but it was clogging the system,” says Hoddy.
“So the cemetery got its own website and the Top of the South History grew out of the Nelson page. It’s a way of keeping the past alive, bringing people together and making connections.”
As the headstones are cleaned and names revealed, Dianne Scott, genealogist, researches and checks there are no confidentiality concerns and then passes her findings onto the Top of the South Facebook page.
“We started out by only doing the well-known names – past mayors, well-known businessmen, leaders of the community,” says Brian.
“Then we thought that everyone had a right to be remembered so we would put a name up and it would trigger someone’s memory, start a conversation and old photos would appear.”
The group certainly enjoyed putting faces to names on Saturday, and our country is smaller than you would think. Paul Cullen from Auckland met the guy who went to sea scouts with his brother, the guy who he shares an uncle with and an old neighbour whose mini glasshouse he broke when he was about 4 years old.