Incidentally, the Act which sent me down this rabbit hole was data 10 January 1842, and came into effect March 1842, so the reference to the County of Eden in the pro forma for a deed in this Act also pre-dated the official proclamation of Eden County!

I'm apparently not the first to wonder about Eden County. The "Manukau's Journey" site at Auckland Libraries cites an article "The Vanished County of Eden", published in 1971 by Dr GT Bloomfield of the University of Guelph. I will be getting a copy next time I go into the library.

#NZHistory #EdenCounty #LegalHistory #AucklandLibraries

I also tried looking for other collections of historic maps, and found

https://maps.recollect.co.nz/ which appears to cover the South Island only

http://www.mapspast.org.nz/ which covers all of New Zealand, but doesn't appear to go back far enough.

This last site reminded me of Papers Past, which has digitised copies of New Zealand newspapers, and here I found a reference to land sales in the "Parish of Waitemata in the County of Eden" in 1841.

Armed with this date I was able to find the information I was looking for on the Manukau's Journey microsite from Auckland Libraries:
https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/manukau/id/7453/rec/1

The royal instructions mentioned up-thread authorised the Lieutenant Governor to survey and divide the country into counties etc. As part of this survey, land near Auckland was designated as being in the County of Eden before this entity was officially proclaimed on 27 July 1842.

#NZHistory #EdenCounty #Mapstodon

It turned out to be surprisingly difficult to find out when Eden County was established.

It is easy enough to find that when the provinces of New Zealand were dissolved in 1876 they were replaced by counties, but Eden County obviously predates this.

The logical place to look would be the New Zealand Gazette, but this has only been digitised back to 1993 (and libraries which might hold print copies are closed over the holiday period)

On the off-chance the county was established prior to self-government I also checked the UK and NSW Gazettes. Nothing about Eden County, but the Royal Charter and associated Instructions for establishing British Government of New Zealand are fascinating reading (https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/20687/page/5998 ) as are the approval of a flag and shipping registry for the Confederation of Chiefs of New Zealand (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page12477696 )

#EdenCounty #NZHistory #Gazette

With my IIIF url in hand I wanted to try Bert Spaan's AllMaps tool to georeference it https://editor.allmaps.org/#/

Unfortunately the map wouldn't load in the tool (I suspect issues with CORS headers)

Instead I used dezoomify (https://dezoomify.ophir.dev/) to extract the full resolution version of the image, then loaded it into georeferencer.com

With the map of Eden County now georeferenced to a modern map, I spent a lot of time comparing the 1900 version of the area to today.

https://www.georeferencer.com/compare#479021081621

But at the bottom left of this map, Eden County borders Waitemata County, whereas in another, earlier, map of Auckland Province, Eden County extends a lot further north. So when did this change occur?

#NZHistory #EdenCounty #Mapstodon #IIIF #DigitalHumanities

A quick google search led me to a map of Eden County held by the National Library of New Zealand:
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/21974215

This particular copy dates from c.1900, though another version held by Auckland City Libraries is dated 1891 (and is impressively hand-shaded to reflect the topography)

Knowing the boundaries of the county at this point in time, I wanted to compare it to a modern map. Neither of the digitised copies I had found were georeferenced, but I noticed a little IIP logo on the viewer window.

A quick check of the documentation reveals this software supports IIIF, inspecting the viewer page revealed the IIP URL, and a little trial and error gave me a working IIIF url for the map:

https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/iipsrv?IIIF=2021/07/24/ac_107/V1-FL73800167.jp2/full/full/0/native.jpg

#NZHistory #EdenCounty #Maps #Mapstodon #IIIF

A quick google search led me to a map of Eden County held by the National Library of New Zealand:
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/21974215

This particular copy dates from c.1900, though another version held by Auckland City Libraries is dated 1891 (and is impressively hand-shaded to reflect the topography)

Knowing the boundaries of the county at this point in time, I wanted to compare it to a modern map. Neither of the digitised copies I had found were georeferenced, but I noticed a little IIP logo on the viewer window.

A quick check of the documentation reveals this software supports IIIF, inspecting the viewer page revealed the IIP URL, and a little trial and error gave me a working IIIF url for the map:

https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/iipsrv?IIIF=2021/07/24/ac_107/V1-FL73800167.jp2/full/full/0/native.jpg

#NZHistory #EdenCounty #Maps #Mapstodon #IIIF

My foray into repealed versions of New Zealand's property laws last month (on the occasion of purchasing some land) has led me down a holiday rabbit hole (What was Eden County?), and to a few new-to-me resources.

The first resource is the NZLII's database of historical Acts as enacted:
http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/
Many countries, including NZ, have online versions of current or recently repealed legislation, but it is often hard to find the text of older, no longer in force, acts.

So, in this database I found the first property law act (or technically ordinance, since NZ wasn't self-governing then), and the original exemplar for a deed to transfer property.

The thing in particular that caught my eye was the description of place – "Auckland, in the County of Eden".

As this, or indeed any other, county no longer exists in New Zealand, I was curious to find out more about its geographic and temporal extent. (Thread)

#LegalHistory #NZHistory #EdenCounty