PAPER TRAILS

WORDS: John O'Hare / IMAGERY: Jess Burgess

Recently acknowledged for their significance to our documentary heritage, many of the Clendon Papers are still housed in the family home with which they’re associated

For David Clendon and his siblings growing up in the 1960s, Clendon House in Rawene was Aunty Marge and Uncle Trevor’s house.

The kauri cottage with its gabled attic was a place of family holidays, golden summers and rich memories. Little did David realise at the time the extent and nature of the memories associated with the house – and how far back they stretched.

Copies of pages from Laurine Hansen's 1907 hand-decorated school exercise book in the former schoolroom at Clendon House

Last year the Clendon Papers – a collection of family papers spanning almost 150 years – was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Register. They joined two writing slates (both Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga collection items) from Kemp House in Kerikeri, which had been added to the register in 2018.

Part of the Clendon Papers collection is located at Clendon House, a Tohu Whenua that was once the home of David’s ancestor James Reddy Clendon and his second wife Jane; other items are archived at Auckland Council Libraries Ngā Pātaka Kōrero o Tāmaki Makaurau (known as Auckland Libraries). In 1973, when Clendon House was acquired by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (then the New Zealand Historic Places Trust), the collection went with it.

And what a collection it is. Besides obvious standouts like the certified manuscript copy of te Tiriti o Waitangi in te reo Māori, the Clendon Papers comprise 3000 items including personal, business and official correspondence, letterbooks, ephemera and photographs – and more.

The earliest items span the 1820s and ’30s and document James Reddy Clendon’s years in pre-Treaty Aotearoa – a rarity in itself as missionaries tended to grab the limelight with an abundance of documents recording their exploits.

Clendon himself is generally described as a Northland trader, merchant, settler and farmer, and as a government official and the first US consul in New Zealand – although this hardly does him justice.

Clendon made history as one of the few Europeans to have his name on both He Whakaputanga (the Declaration of Independence) in 1835 and te Tiriti o Waitangi on 6 February 1840. Investigate early Pākehā settlement in the Bay of Islands and Hokianga and it’s hard to escape his shadow. Figuratively speaking, Clendon’s historic DNA is everywhere.

A former Green MP, Northlander David Clendon wasn’t particularly aware of the collection growing up, though he certainly knew the house had history.

“As kids we were more interested in artefacts than documents, which in any case would have been in drawers and cupboards where we were not encouraged to fossick!” he recalls.

A family culture of preservation – which David exhibits in his own reluctance “to part with paper of all sorts” – may be one reason for the collection’s existence. That, and the fact that generations of Clendons lived in the same house for more than a century.

David Clendon - a descendant of James Reddy Clendon and Jane Clendon - on the verandah at Clendon House in Rawene

Auckland Libraries also owns a collection of Clendon papers acquired over the years, with other items placed there by the then New Zealand Historic Places Trust when the house changed hands. UNESCO recognition was given to the totality of the papers belonging to both organisations – indeed the submission was a joint one by Auckland Libraries and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Retired manuscript librarian Kate de Courcy is familiar with the collection, describing it as “a remarkable survival of a family’s papers over 140 years”.

Kate knows remarkable when she sees it: taonga cared for by Auckland Libraries range from medieval manuscripts to Governor Grey’s letters and manuscripts, many in te reo Māori. The Clendon Papers collection, however, is unique.

“The papers up to the 1850s,” she says, “show the importance of family and financial links with England, Australia and the US, plus the development of government in New Zealand and Clendon’s part in the Northern War [in the Bay of Islands] and administrative roles.”

Subsequent generations of Clendon lives are recorded in documentary material reflecting the evolving bilingual, bicultural society of Hokianga. The collection is the epitome of local place-based history and, in light of the new history curriculum, offers many opportunities for learning today.

“James Clendon and his descendants kept enormous amounts of paper documents and photographs,” says Kate. “No decluttering or minimalism here! This was the record of their lives, and I’m unaware of the existence of any other collection like it in New Zealand.”

Clendon House, however, was Jane Clendon’s home too, and the collection reflects this.

Jane Takotowi Cochrane was the daughter of Irish settler Dennis Brown Cochrane and his wife Takotowi Te Whata, and was a woman of influence and chiefly mana. Documents record Jane’s determination to clear the huge debt left by James following his death in 1872.

“Through sheer grit and enterprise, Jane –39 years younger than her husband – managed to pay her creditors, ensuring the house and its contents remained in the family,” says David.

“If it hadn’t been for her, it is unlikely that the collection would have survived.”

The Clendon Papers collection offers wonderful opportunities for researchers, but also some challenges, according to Kate.

“There is nothing like reading, say, the letter handwritten by Jane Clendon to [trader, judge and writer] Frederick Maning asking for his advice, in the house and landscape where she wrote it, and knowing that Maning was living further down the Hokianga,” she says.

The Clendon House attic, which was once used as a schoolroom.

Some of the many artefacts on display at Clendon House

“You wonder whether the letter would have been delivered on foot or horseback, or by boat, and how long it would have taken to get there and for his reply to come.”

The challenge is that these papers may be better kept centrally in a library, for example, rather than in their original site. Items become more accessible and are protected in secure, environmentally controlled conditions.

Nothing can compare with reading original documents, but technology can provide a solution for researchers.

“Digitisation can give superb-quality results, which can then be presented in a number of ways – including as transcriptions for ease of reading. It also saves wear and tear on the originals and can make items accessible online across locations,” she says.

The desk in the Clendon House office

The value of the Clendon Papers is in their content – though some, like historian Barbara Gawith, also acknowledge the power of their connection to place.

Ephemera including a first class certificate awarded to George Clendon

Barbara is a fifth-generation descendant of James Clendon and his first wife Sarah, and her interest in her ancestor was sparked when she read a book on Clendon by an English relative.

A research trip to Rawene followed for her MA thesis titled James Reddy Clendon: Trade, Entrepreneurship and Empire

“I first visited Clendon House at this time, and I was privileged to sit in Jane’s kitchen,” she recalls. “Here was where my ancestors ate breakfast, chatted and shared stories. I was amazed and delighted when then curator Lindsay Charman produced document after document. Here was a living dossier on the life of James Clendon, and I felt that Clendon’s past was no longer ‘another country’ but was vibrantly present there in that kitchen.

“To have all this material in one place in the family home gave my research an immediacy that felt as if Clendon himself was still there, recounting the story of his life.

“The ability to handle primary documents brings the past alive considerably more than reading an electronic version on a screen or copies of originals.”

David Clendon and Belinda Maingay

Belinda Maingay, Collections Advisor for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, agrees, although she also acknowledges the need to keep collection items in secure and stable environments. Her role juggles the tension between access, context and preservation.

“It’s the totality of a place, which includes its collections, that gives it its real heritage value. We are able to modify the environments at sites to a degree to provide better levels of protection, as well as to encourage good housekeeping practice, monitor pest control and ensure good security is in place.

“We assess the risks at each of our sites around the country and mitigate accordingly.”

While digitisation is potentially a powerful tool, it has its limits, according to Belinda.

“People don’t go to Archives New Zealand to see a copy of the Treaty. They go there to see the original. It’s a bit the same with our collections,” she says.

That said, Belinda’s main concern is always to protect collection items – sometimes relocating them to offsite storage or places that provide better options for care, as occurred with the significant parts of the Clendon Papers collection that were relocated to Auckland Libraries in the 1970s under a storage agreement.

She is cautious about the practicality and desirability of museums and libraries housing collections currently located in sites around the country.

“Our collections are vast. The reality is that museums and libraries are unlikely to be able to take on entire collections such as those housed in many of our properties, which means the entirety of a collection could be lost and potentially devalued.”

And sometimes collection items just don’t make sense outside the places in which they’re kept.

“Take the collection of The Southdown and Reader’s Digest and other magazines associated with the Coates family at Ruatuna, for example. Away from Ruatuna they have little value. At Ruatuna, though, they say a great deal about the people who lived there.”

For David Clendon, the collection cannot be separated from the place.

“Some of the documents predate the Rawene house, but it is here where everything has come together and been retained,” he says.

“I hope it will continue as a ‘storehouse’ for much of the collection for a long time to come, as taking it elsewhere would seem to be a dislocation.”

Barbara Gawith agrees.

“So many of our historic sites leave few relics that enable later generations to relive past events, but repositories like Clendon House keep our histories alive and in front of us,” she says.

“It is from our past that our present identities are forged. A visual reminder that holds a written repository of its past occupants’ lives is a valuable and permanent link to our own and our country’s past.”

FOLLOWING THE PAPER TRAIL

When it comes to documentary heritage, it doesn’t have to be important to have value, according to David Clendon.

“It’s often the ephemera of daily life and relatively mundane events that bring history alive, and make it easier to connect to,” he says.

Much of the Clendon Papers collection falls into that category – not especially earth-shattering at face value, but if you dig a little deeper you might be amazed at what you find.

Pension applications, for example, contain priceless details of genealogy recorded for posterity in black ink. And while century-old horticultural show prize certificates for plants might appear to be candidates for recycling, Kate de Courcy sees gold.

“Information contained in items like these can build a background picture that can help present the place to visitors,” she says.

“The prize-winning plants could help inform the planting in the garden at Clendon House, for example.

“A collection like this can help with an integrated approach to looking after the building, its environs and the items inside the house.” n

To see more of the Clendon Papers, view our video story here: youtube.com/HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga

Explore the collection https://bit.ly/Clendon