Personal histories

This page has been written by Emeritus Professor Paul Nation.

This webpage contains family history relating to the Nation and Ashwell families. My nominal great-grandfather, William Charles Nation, wrote his family history in the 1920s and this handwritten document is reproduced here as a PDF file and has also been transcribed into computer readable form. His account of spiritualist events in his home is described in a book he published called The Unseen World.

My grandmother on my mother’s side, Harriet Ashwell, wrote her family history and I transcribed the several hundred handwritten pages and had 125 copies published. An electronic copy of this book is on this web page along with a Microsoft Word version with minor errors corrected. Hard copies of the book are held by each of her descendants as well as the Raetihi Public Library and the New Zealand National Library.

I am writing a history of my immediate family starting with my grandparents, and will keep this file on this webpage as I make progress.