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                (
                    [0] => This correspondence comprises letters from residents in the province, provincial officials, letters from Maori, and miscellaneous telegrams and letters.
                )

            [id] => 8194
            [idSort] => 8194
            [name] => Superintendent's local and general correspondence
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                    [custom5] => Loose papers & bound volumes
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                            [0] => 17244
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            [authenticityNote] => 
1. This series description was compiled as part of a project to capture the finding aids created prior to 1987 into the GAIMS system. 
2. The dates of the series are based on the dates of the holdings. 
3. Requesting an item to view: The letters in boxes 1 to 12 are listed to the box level only. Archives staff will normally only retrieve a single item at a time. Please identify the specific item that you wish to request by referring to the controlling series. 
4. Provenance: The records were stored in an attic of old Provincial Council chambers in Napier until 1900, when they were sent to the Colonial Secretary's Department. They were inventoried c. 1907 and some of the archives were subsequently disposed of. Some were sent to the Commissioner of Crown Lands at Napier, some of the printed papers were sent to the Government Printer for distribution, and some were destroyed. The remaining archives were moved to the Police Headquarters Building in 1911 when water damage was discovered. In 1919 they were reorganised and re-listed. A comparison of this and the earlier inventory show that some further records may have been lost. Both inventories actually covered the records of three agencies - the Hawke's Bay Provincial Government, the Agent for the General Government at Hawke's Bay and the earlier archives of the Commissioner of Crown Lands at Napier. These had probably been stored together in the Provincial Council chambers and were intermingled to some extent. 
5. Arrangement and description: The papers were transferred to the (then Dominion) Archives c. 1946 and the three groups of records were separated. The arrangement of the subsequent archive record groups followed their original arrangement as closely as possible, but in cases where the papers were completely confused or where they had lost all trace of their old order, new series and groupings were made. For full details see "National Archives Preliminary Inventory No.6"
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            [history] => 
This correspondence comprises letters from residents in the province, provincial officials, letters from Maori, and miscellaneous telegrams and letters. 
The letters from residents in the province and from provincial officials deal with such topics as mail services, the police force, schools, roads and other works, harbour improvements and reclamation, publican's licences, financial assistance, government employment, public health, Maori affairs, land purchases, the defence of the province during the Maori Wars, immigration to the province (see below for more details), railway lines and coach services, and disease in sheep. 
The letters from Maori (HB4/13) include tenders and offers to carry out road works, and accounts of their sentiments towards Europeans. There are also reports of engagements with hostile Maori, Maori aggression, inter-provincial road and mail communications, and lists of immigrants sponsored by the Provincial Government arriving in the province between 1862 and 1866. 



Immigration Letters, items 14-15
These series of letters have been indexed (by name of immigrant) into the General Biographical Card Index [BIO 1] located in the Archives New Zealand, Wellington Office reading room.



The sequence (addressed variously to the Provincial Superintendent, the Provincial Treasurer, or the Chairman of the Immigration Board) opens with correspondence from Bethune and Hunter, in Wellington. From 17 May 1862 it contains almost exclusively[1] the despatches from John Morrison, the New Zealand Government Agent in London (1859-71). Most of his letters bear an issuing number; only a few have an inwards registration. The sequence is numerical (issuing office) order first, date order where unnumbered. 



Morrison reported arrangements for nominated immigrant passages. He attempted to provide direct passages to Napier but, hampered by insufficiency of passenger numbers and freight, generally had to be content with places on vessels going to Auckland or (more commonly) Wellington. This correspondence, together with his half-yearly account statements to the Hawke's Bay provincial government, makes it possible to ascertain all the vessels used for nominated immigration to Hawke's Bay, 1863-71 and identification of passengers bound for Napier is feasible for most - by certified lists, promissory notes (original or duplicate), or preliminary lists of those 'about to embark'. Where none of these have survived for a particular passage the lists of 'nominated emigrants still on the books' can be useful: they were regularly updated and show the results of correspondence with particular emigrants on their readiness to depart for New Zealand. 
A list of immigrant vessels mentioned in this series is appended in 'Additional finding aids', and these are noted in the card index with any special details - for example, the fouling of the "Rangoon" and protracted detention at Ramsgate, the destruction by fire of the "Montmorency" after its arrival at Napier and the claims against Shaw Savill for lost baggage. Of interest, too, is the correspondence with various of the immigrant selectors, notably Misses Rye and Ogilby. 



Morrison was the forerunner of the Agent General (two of whose letters, late 1871, are in this series) and he himself suggested such a transition to the Hawke's Bay Provincial Superintendent in 1868 [2]. The correspondence deals with matters apart from immigration, in particular the state of the money market, noting carefully the progress of provincial (and Australian) loans. Other letters refer to the forwarding of parliamentary papers covering New Zealand affairs and distributing publicity material received from New Zealand [3]. Where inward letter series have survived for the 1860's in other provinces, similar letters from Morrison may be found, for example, in Record Group Nelson Province, series 7 (series 16443).



With Featherston's assumption of the office of Agent General (August 1871), Morrison's correspondence on new immigration matters ceased. The final letters (1872-73) concerns a shipment of English singing birds on the "Forfarshire", paid for jointly by the Hawke's Bay Acclimatisation Society and the Provincial Government: many birds died before reaching New Zealand. 



Footnotes:
[1] The exceptions are dated 12 February 1863 (nominated immigrant passage payment), 12 June 1868, 11 September 1869, 24 August 1870 (all concerning trans-shipment of Hawke's Bay immigrants from Wellington to Napier), and two letters from Featherston, as Agent-General, in November 1871. Two letters, dated 23 May 1868 and 4 June 1868, were written by Morrison while back in New Zealand. 

[2] Item 15, Series 8194, 28 December 1868.

[3] For Morrison's work in the context of the Agent-General (appointed 1871), see R.M.Dalziel, The Origins of New Zealand Diplomacy, Wellington, 1975, chapter one, especially p20.
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                            [name] => Wellington repository
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            [ricClassificationDescription] => This series contains at least eight different classification systems including:

- chronological, by date of receipt;
- numerical, running number;
- numerical, annual single number; and
- numerical, a variation on annual single number where instead of using the year of receipt, a block number is used.

NB: Sub-series 13-15 were re-arranged in November 1975; the old sub-series numbers are in parentheses in the list.
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