Fascinating find at Archives

A fascinating glimpse of our past has been revealed by Archives NZ after some passport application files which were previously thought not to exist were discovered.

Passport application files would not usually be retained as a public archive due to the large number processed every year and the limited value that the records have to both individuals and the Department once the passport has been issued.

However after a researcher requested his grandfather’s file, staff checked containers named ‘passport files’ and although nothing was found on the grandfather the applications of several notable New Zealanders were discovered.

They included Sir Edmund Hillary, the 1924 All Blacks Invincibles, former PM Joseph Gordon Coates, women’s health champion Dr Agnes Bennet and prominent Maori figures Peter Buck and Miria Pomare

Chief Archivist Richard Foy says although the applications may not be of use to family historians, they do provide a rare insight into the passport applications process of yesteryear.

“Nowadays we issue more than 700,000 passports a year and over half of them are done online but back then the process was a lot more labour intensive.

“The significance of the find lies in rarely seen passport application photographs and an idea of where individuals were travelling to at the start of the 20th Century,” My Foy says.

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