The Data
The data sets available through this website have been collected from a broad range of sources. The nature and scope of the data means that it is not possible to provide a reference for every individual data point, but for each individual we have indicated the primary sources of information, along with links to any additional sources that you might find useful.
General Data
a) Members of the House of Representatives
The data collection began through use of the official ‘Roll of members of the New Zealand House of Representatives’:For the sake of consistency, we have adopted the spellings used in this source. The official roll also provided us with the electorates each member represented, the parliaments in which they sat, their party, and their reason for departure. In many cases it also provided dates of birth and death.
Ministers
Data detailing each minister, their ministerial roles, and the start and end dates for their respective ministerial roles was obtained through the following sources:
Electorates
Geo Coordinates have been used to visually map members of parliament to their respective electorates (coming soon to the data explorer). The latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for every electorate (from 1853–present) were drawn from Google Maps, using:
b) Members of the Legislative Council
Parliament’s website also provided us with a list of ‘Members of the New Zealand Legislative Council, 1853-1950’:Again, we have adopted the spellings used in this official list, which also provided the district of each member, their date of appointment, the date they vacated their seat, and their reason for vacating.
c) Members of the Provincial Council
Building the data set for the Provincial Councils was more challenging, as there is no official roll maintained by Parliament itself. Here we utilised Guy Scholefield’s New Zealand Parliamentary Record, published first in 1950, and updated subsequently by Supplementary issues compiled by J.O. Wilson. The New Zealand Parliamentary Record allowed us to compile a list of all provincial councillors, their provinces and electorates, and dates of service. We also used this source to cross-check the official parliamentary roll.
d) Governors
The Governor’s list was initially compiled from the official Governors-General website.
Biographical Data
Once we had compiled the lists of members of a) the House, b) the Legislative Council, c) the Provincial Councils, and d) the Governors, we began the not insignificant task of collating biographical information about the members.
The first resource that we drew from was the set of lists maintained by parliament of female and Māori members:
The research process then moved beyond the officially maintained sources into deeper historical research. The bibliographic data that populates the database was largely drawn from the following key sources:
These sources were used in order of reliability. Te Ara’s Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was used as the first repository. It contains over 3,000 biographies that are written by specialist researchers and has undergone extensive cross-checking. It is the most authoritative and up-to-date reference tool available. Scholefield’s A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography is Te Ara’s predecessor and has been useful for finding information about individuals whose biographies are not recorded on Te Ara. It has also assisted us with adding further biographical data to an individual who features on Te Ara. While well-researched, it is less reliable than Te Ara’s Dictionary of New Zealand Biography because it was written in 1940 and does not include information that has become available since then, such as the date and place of an individual’s death (if they died after the book was written).
If an individual is not featured in either DNZB, the third port of call is the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, which was published in six volumes between 1897 and 1908 by the Cyclopedia Company Ltd. Each volume deals with a region of New Zealand and includes biographical entries that detail a subject's date and place of birth, the name of the ship by which immigrants arrived, spouse's name, and the number and gender of children born to a couple. Many individuals that feature in Cyclopedia were still alive at the time of its writing, so it is not as up-to-date as the DNZBs. Its information has been particularly helpful in gathering data on an individual’s heritage and lineage. Many individuals came from prominent political families, so gathering data on an individual from the DNZBs and Cyclopedia has sometimes meant consulting the biographical data of their family members. For example, Provincial Council member, Henry Redwood, did not have a Cyclopedia written about him but there was some detailed information in his sons’ biographies.
If an individual does not feature in the Cyclopedia either (as was sometimes the case with provincial council members), or if biographical information on them is still scant, newspaper obituaries found on PapersPast have allowed us to fill in the missing pieces of information. Many individuals had obituaries written about them in multiple newspapers, with each newspaper extracting different information about the person. Usually, the most detailed obituary has been used as a source. Obituaries have provided us with details on an individual’s date and place of death, as well as further biographical information not previously found in the other three sources.
While information in the DNZBs and Cyclopedia seldom conflicted, obituaries sometimes conflicted with one another. For example, the exact date of an individual’s death might have been erroneously recorded. Most conflict detected occurred in obituaries for individuals that also had entries in either of the DNZBs or Cyclopedia, so those repositories were regarded as the more authoritative sources.
These sources have been systematically searched to extract as much data as possible, and the research team is incredibly grateful to the institutions that have made access to such a rich source base possible.
Information for Governors has also been drawn from the official New Zealand Governor-General pages of past Governors/Governors-General and Gavin McLean's The Governors: New Zealand's Governors and Governors-General.
In addition, we were fortunate enough to be able to access data from different data sets already compiled by Professor Jim McAloon (part of a project examining the colonial middle class in New Zealand) and Dr. Fiona Barker (part of a project investigating representation in modern New Zealand politics).
We are aware that there is more data out there – so watch this space as this database grows!
General Data
a) Members of the House of Representatives
The data collection began through use of the official ‘Roll of members of the New Zealand House of Representatives’:For the sake of consistency, we have adopted the spellings used in this source. The official roll also provided us with the electorates each member represented, the parliaments in which they sat, their party, and their reason for departure. In many cases it also provided dates of birth and death.
Ministers
Data detailing each minister, their ministerial roles, and the start and end dates for their respective ministerial roles was obtained through the following sources:
- Guy H. Scholefield, New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1949 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1950)
- James Oakley Wilson, New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1985)
- G. A. Wood, Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1996).
- Craig Spanhake, Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament, 1996–2005: Supplement for the years 1996–2005 to G. A. Wood’s Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament (Dunedin: Tarkwode Press, 2006).
- Parliamentary website:
- ‘Members of Parliament’, New Zealand Parliament; https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/
Electorates
Geo Coordinates have been used to visually map members of parliament to their respective electorates (coming soon to the data explorer). The latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for every electorate (from 1853–present) were drawn from Google Maps, using:
- Alan McRobie, New Zealand Electoral Atlas (Wellington: GP Books, 1989).
- Electorate Profiles on the New Zealand Parliament website:
- ‘Electorate profiles 2020’, New Zealand Parliament; https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/electorate-profiles/
- ‘Historical electorate profiles’, New Zealand Parliament; https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/historical-electorate-profiles/
b) Members of the Legislative Council
Parliament’s website also provided us with a list of ‘Members of the New Zealand Legislative Council, 1853-1950’:Again, we have adopted the spellings used in this official list, which also provided the district of each member, their date of appointment, the date they vacated their seat, and their reason for vacating.
c) Members of the Provincial Council
Building the data set for the Provincial Councils was more challenging, as there is no official roll maintained by Parliament itself. Here we utilised Guy Scholefield’s New Zealand Parliamentary Record, published first in 1950, and updated subsequently by Supplementary issues compiled by J.O. Wilson. The New Zealand Parliamentary Record allowed us to compile a list of all provincial councillors, their provinces and electorates, and dates of service. We also used this source to cross-check the official parliamentary roll.
- ‘Former Members of Parliament’, New Zealand Parliament; https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/former-members-of-parliament/
d) Governors
The Governor’s list was initially compiled from the official Governors-General website.
Biographical Data
Once we had compiled the lists of members of a) the House, b) the Legislative Council, c) the Provincial Councils, and d) the Governors, we began the not insignificant task of collating biographical information about the members.
The first resource that we drew from was the set of lists maintained by parliament of female and Māori members:
- https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/mps-and-parliaments-1854-onwards/women-members-of-the-new-zealand-parliament-1933-onwards/
- https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/mps-and-parliaments-1854-onwards/m%C4%81ori-mps-in-the-new-zealand-parliament-1868-onwards/
The research process then moved beyond the officially maintained sources into deeper historical research. The bibliographic data that populates the database was largely drawn from the following key sources:
- The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, maintained by Te Ara (https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies)
- Guy Scholefield’s 1940 A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, published in two volumes to document individuals of national significance. PDFs of these important volumes are available from nzhistory.govt.nz/
- The Cyclopedia of New Zealand – a 6-volume, privately produced encylopedia, published between 1897 and 1908. The Cyclopedia is available online from the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection - http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/
- Papers Past – PapersPast is a collection of freely available, digitised newspapers maintained by the National Library - https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/
These sources were used in order of reliability. Te Ara’s Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was used as the first repository. It contains over 3,000 biographies that are written by specialist researchers and has undergone extensive cross-checking. It is the most authoritative and up-to-date reference tool available. Scholefield’s A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography is Te Ara’s predecessor and has been useful for finding information about individuals whose biographies are not recorded on Te Ara. It has also assisted us with adding further biographical data to an individual who features on Te Ara. While well-researched, it is less reliable than Te Ara’s Dictionary of New Zealand Biography because it was written in 1940 and does not include information that has become available since then, such as the date and place of an individual’s death (if they died after the book was written).
If an individual is not featured in either DNZB, the third port of call is the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, which was published in six volumes between 1897 and 1908 by the Cyclopedia Company Ltd. Each volume deals with a region of New Zealand and includes biographical entries that detail a subject's date and place of birth, the name of the ship by which immigrants arrived, spouse's name, and the number and gender of children born to a couple. Many individuals that feature in Cyclopedia were still alive at the time of its writing, so it is not as up-to-date as the DNZBs. Its information has been particularly helpful in gathering data on an individual’s heritage and lineage. Many individuals came from prominent political families, so gathering data on an individual from the DNZBs and Cyclopedia has sometimes meant consulting the biographical data of their family members. For example, Provincial Council member, Henry Redwood, did not have a Cyclopedia written about him but there was some detailed information in his sons’ biographies.
If an individual does not feature in the Cyclopedia either (as was sometimes the case with provincial council members), or if biographical information on them is still scant, newspaper obituaries found on PapersPast have allowed us to fill in the missing pieces of information. Many individuals had obituaries written about them in multiple newspapers, with each newspaper extracting different information about the person. Usually, the most detailed obituary has been used as a source. Obituaries have provided us with details on an individual’s date and place of death, as well as further biographical information not previously found in the other three sources.
While information in the DNZBs and Cyclopedia seldom conflicted, obituaries sometimes conflicted with one another. For example, the exact date of an individual’s death might have been erroneously recorded. Most conflict detected occurred in obituaries for individuals that also had entries in either of the DNZBs or Cyclopedia, so those repositories were regarded as the more authoritative sources.
These sources have been systematically searched to extract as much data as possible, and the research team is incredibly grateful to the institutions that have made access to such a rich source base possible.
Information for Governors has also been drawn from the official New Zealand Governor-General pages of past Governors/Governors-General and Gavin McLean's The Governors: New Zealand's Governors and Governors-General.
In addition, we were fortunate enough to be able to access data from different data sets already compiled by Professor Jim McAloon (part of a project examining the colonial middle class in New Zealand) and Dr. Fiona Barker (part of a project investigating representation in modern New Zealand politics).
We are aware that there is more data out there – so watch this space as this database grows!