The material is divided up into series. Unfortunately the original filing system for the post 1901 material up until 1948 was lost or not fully understood and much of it was roughly 're-sorted' in the late 1980's. With a grant from the 'World Council For Mission' in 1999, considerable work has been undertaken to ensure that the provenance (source) of the information is correct and that all records are correctly sorted with a considerable amount of mis-sorted material being transferred to its correct provenance and series. The information has been described and the most important topics or recurring themes recorded as per the details on this site.
The most important changes from what appears to have been the original filing system are as follows :
- The Mission Secretary's and Mission Convenor's inwards and outwards correspondence were sorted together. While this original filing system could have been rebuilt with time and care, much of this correspondence contained duplicates of inwards correspondence and reports. The decision was therefore made to remove the duplicated material where there were no alterations and annotations evident. The remaining material is now filed under joint correspondence files. It should be noted that some outwards joint correspondence files were originally created in this form.
- A large number of original subject files had been re-sorted into the main inwards correspondence. This is evidenced by the Convenor or Secretary's original hand written headings in red ink at the top of many of the letters. By and large, this has not been corrected, however any important material or themes have been noted during the description work carried out on each file.
- A large number of Mission related books and pamphlets belonging to the Foreign Missions Committee were separated from the manuscript material and added to the collections of the Hewitson Theological Library. Many of the pamphlets have been returned to our manuscript collections. Those Mission related books held by the Hewitson Theological Library are accessible by the Archives and by researchers for reference purposes. Our own collection of rare and out of print Mission related reference books continues to grow and we hope to provide a listing on this site in the near future.
Many of the re - sorting errors discovered included correspondence in the incorrect files, incorrect provenance of material, and some repatriated correspondence from South China and the Punjab Missions sorted into the NZ Mission Secretary's or Convenor's correspondence files.
We also made the occasional curious discovery such as finding that we held the Church of Christ in China Kwantung Synod's Ledger and Cash Books dating from 1948 to 1951. As the Synod Accountant Miss Mollie Findlay was also the NZ Mission Treasurer and based in Hong Kong, the Communist takeover evidently meant that she could not return the books to Canton. She then appears to have brought them back to New Zealand with her in 1951 for safe keeping where they remained unidentified and forgotten for at least the last 20 years.
Please return to the Home Page to access the manuscript material. |
