Archives Turns 50!
Recently, a reunion was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Salvation Army New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa Territory’s Heritage Centre and Archives. SALT magazine, formerly War Cry, acknowledges the contribution made by archivists to SALT’s preservation as well as content for Salvationists in History, and offers the following timeline of important dates and events in celebration of this significant milestone.
In February 1975, an initial meeting was held at the Aro Street Training College (Wellington), to inaugurate a Salvation Army ‘historical trust’. A few months later in April, War Cry magazine featured an open letter from the territorial commander of the day, Commissioner Ernest Elliot, announcing the recently formed Historical Trust of The Salvation Army in the territory. The constitution for the trust was formalised in July 1981 and officially signed off by Commissioner Dean Goffin, the then territorial commander.
In 1983, agreement was reached with the newly opened Booth College of Mission (BCM) in Trentham to provide a display space in the library and storage onsite. In 1985, official Minutes and Guidelines for The Preservation of TSA Documents and Other Records were sent to all officers. Two years later, the Historical Trust made a submission to incorporate room for an Archives Department into the planning of the new territorial headquarters building (Cuba Street). This came to pass in 1990, with the opening of the new building and the appointing of the first territorial archivist, Major Laurence Hay, who drafted the first Archives Acquisitions Policy the following year. With the commencement of the Archives Department, the Historical Trust was dis-established. A major project for the new department was the micro-filming of The War Cry which began in 1995, with indexing following suit in 1998.
As the new millennium approached, the first issue of the Salvationist Heritage newsletter went to print, shortly followed by the first Tri-Territorial Archives Conference in 2001.
With the closing of The Salvation Army’s aged-care facilities, over 600 boxes of files were received for processing by Archives in 2005.
A significant change occurred in 2010 with the official farewell to the Archives Department at Territorial Headquarters, and the opening of the Plowman Resource Centre, Library, Heritage Centre and Archive at BCM. An archivist road trip to collect artefacts from Dunedin, Oamaru, Timaru and Christchurch took place in 2014. Between the years of 2015–2018, the Heritage Centre and Archives spearheaded a project researching The Salvation Army’s role in World War 1, which culminated in the publication of the book Under Two Flags in 2018. The first issue of Revelations newsletter was rolled out the same year, with the first publication of the Heritage Series in 2019—both significant and helpful historical documents which serve to tell the story of the territory in an accessible and attractive way to new Salvationists and future generations.
