Missing dead to have their fate logged for researchers

Don Hoult, Legacy operations manager. Photo/File

Genealogists have fixed a loophole for people who access Tauranga's information sources to trace family histories.

Heather McLean of the Tauranga branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists said members had noticed that some people who had died were going missing from the record.

Death certificates were issued but no further information on the disposal of their bodies could be obtained from the usual council-based online sources that dealt with burials and cremations.

It was realised that the gap in the record was with deceased who were cremated in Legacy Funeral's cremator and whose ashes were either scattered by loved ones or sent somewhere else. The whereabouts of those people's remains were not ending up in a publicly accessible record.

Now Legacy operations manager Don Hoult has pledged to provide a link for genealogists and others who research their family histories.

"After three years, it is good that something like this has come up," he said, referring to how long their cremator had been operating.

Legacy was having its computer system upgraded and he promised they would "absolutely take note" of what Mrs McLean had suggested.

"We do not want to be the blockage. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, watch this space," Mr Hoult said.