Armidale and District Historical Society Journal and Proceedings: No. 19, April, 1976

Abstract

As the contents of this issue will make clear, regional historical interests are obtaining both a depth of scholarship and a wider appeal for our readers in New South Wales and further afield. Thus, while the usual areas of interest are represented, it is not inappropriate that contributions included glance at (related) experience abroad, in Great Britain, in the United States and elsewhere. In this connection, it is pleasing to be able to include an original paper by R.M. Hartwell, Glen Innes born and certainly New England's most distinguished historian of ideas. The British material on architectural archives, country houses,genealogical study and the piece from Mauritius on Matthew Flinders (a belated bicentenary tribute) all alike shed light on issues and problems of Australian history. An unexpected and pleasing paper is that on the late Professor W.N. Benson. The long article on the settlers at New Italy is important, not least because earlier scholarship, such as the book of Josephine Niau, has concentrated on the New Hebrides and the French strand, to the exclusion of consideration of the actual fate of the Italian colonists, while most Australian (demographic) studies of Italians look largely to the greater Perth area or to Northern Queensland. Pleasing aspects of the research work now being published is the linking in with earlier articles. Thus the present issue contains pieces which link very well with our more recently published research, as on: Roman Catholicism in the north; regional groups of Baptists; the history of geological field work: the Bligh family in New England; the early occupants of 'Booloominbah'; or of the culture and endeavour of the Wyndham family over several centuries. The bicentenary of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 has not been allowed to pass without certain comment. Indeed both this piece and that on anti-capitalism contain salutary and subtle musings which are just as relevant for Australia at present, as they are for their ostensibly distant audiences.