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| Pohangina County Council rate book |
I always like to find other records when researching my family tree and will find something that helps me in narrowing down where they live. I have used the electoral roles in giving peoples addresses and in the case of the UK census records getting their exact location every 10 years or so.
Not all records are online and then not all of them are able to be searched, although I just happen to like flicking through the physical records to see who was nearby especially with the council rate books. Several years ago I visited an Archive centre called Archives Central in Feilding New Zealand as I wanted to have a look at the council rate books as I knew of several family members from the Palmerston North area. I could have viewed these records online, but I was already in the twon and wanted to fill in some time. I could do a search for the records I wanted through my phone and then able to get the assistant to retrieve them for me.
The definition of a rate book is a document used to record property taxes that was applied to residential and businesses, although the rest of the article is to do with the UK, but would have a similar explanation in New Zealand[1]
The rate books have great information like the name, address, owner of the property, who paid the rates. Pohangina is north of Palmerston North and Feilding. The area for a little while had its own council area before amalgamating with the Manawatu council in the late 1980s.
Pohangina Country for the period of April 1895 to March 1896, EJ Milverton of Palmerston North had Block X Section 25 in Pohangina, and he had paid 3 pound, no shillings and 6 pence.
WS (William Stickland) Milverton, my 3x great grandfather appears in the Pohangina council rate book a page above Edward Joseph. The relationship between both are cousins. What he actually has is a little unclear. He has Section 8 and PT sub for the block. I will add additional information later.
G. J Milverton of Palmerston North in the county of Pohangina had a property on Block X Section 25. He paid the rates in Jan of 1900 since the rate book is for the dates from April 1899 to March 1900. The total rates he paid was 2 pound, 10 shillings and 7 pence.
The GJ Milverton mentioned is actually Edward Joseph Milverton of Palmerston North and appears in other rates under the correct name.
In the 1904 to 1905 rate books for Pohangina council area the same property has W and EJ Milverton as owners. They are William and Edward Joseph Milverton who are brothers. They are both from Palmerston North.
In the New Zealand Bankruptcy Notices for 1896, William Stickland Milverton was a storekeeper in Pohangina. The bankruptcy took place around 10th December 1896. He would later pass away in December 1898 and is buried in Palmerston North.
Both William and Edward Joseph Milverton were
prominent residents of Palmerston North and could possibly have been who
influenced William Stickland Milverton to immigrate to New Zealand as they had
already been established in the Palmerston North area when he arrived in 1886
with his family. I have written other blogs about them and their father Joseph. I know William, Edward and Joseph had several other properties in the area, and through Paperspast there are some interesting articles related to these.
Sources
Archives Central New Zealand
https://archivescentral.org.nz/
PCC (Pohangina County Council) General Rate Book 1897/98 to 1903/04, General + some specials 1904/05 to 1909/10.
New Zealand Bankruptcy Notices. [Extracted from the New Zealand Gazette.
Thorne, Nick ‘Rate Books for family history research’, Nosey Geneaologist, https://www.noseygenealogist.com/blog/1284/rate-books-for-family-history-research, accessed 04/01/2025.
[1] Nick Thorne, ‘Rate Books for family history research’, Nosey Geneaologist, https://www.noseygenealogist.com/blog/1284/rate-books-for-family-history-research, accessed 04/01/2025.
