Noeline Shaw: A Creative Legacy

Description

Noeline Shaw was born and raised in Pātea, and brings this once-bustling town to life with extraordinary details about the people and places that made it such a prosperous economic centre in the 1950s. In her younger days, she was a record-holding sportswoman, and later became a passionate genealogist, publishing six books of family history and contributing to the Dictionary of NZ Biography during her life. She was a member of many historical and genealogy organisations, organised family reunions and even started a museum in Wyndham.

“To be a good genealogist you need patience and imagination as the jigsaw unfolds, step by step,” she explained in a newspaper article in 1984. “You must be prepared to accept what you find, whether is it a castle in Ireland or a convict in Australia.”

Thanks to the energy of this extraordinary woman, thousands of Kiwis know a lot more about who they are and where they came from, and her life’s work is a legacy for future generations.