Stebbing family papers

Collection

Identifier: MSS-Archives-FA 2012/07

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Collection comprises a Victorian photograph album containing carte de visite and albumen prints of family members from the 1860s onwards. Accompanying the album are a quantity of loose family photographs, a sketch book, newspaper clippings, postcards, invitations and other ephemera.

The collection includes photographs of members of the Stebbing, Waddell and Hannken families. Many of the loose photographs have been labelled by Philip Thomas Stebbing (1916-1997).

Dates

1860s -1940s

Conditions Governing Access

Not Restricted

Conditions Governing Use

Please issue with gloves.

Biographical / Historical

The Stebbing family were early pioneers of the New Zealand music industry, and their recording studio, Stebbing’s Recording and Sound Company (circa 1940s-1960s), worked with of some of the country’s most significant musicians, including Ray Columbus, and the La De Da’s. Later, under the name Zodiac records, the label produced music by Split Enz, Bunny Walters, Dragon, and Murray Grindlay’s most loved jingles (including one of the country’s most iconic and longest running TV adds, The Great Crunchie Train Robbery advert).

Brothers Philip and Eldred Stebbing, the founders of the Stebbing Recording and Sound Conpany, are descended from Henry William Stebbing who was born in Suffolk in 1829 and died in Auckland in June 1890. Henry Stebbing emigrated to Victoria, Australia in the 1850s to join the Australian gold rush. Like many he moved from the Victorian gold fields to Otago in the early 1860s and the West Coast. In 1867 he married Hannah Beetson (1846-1921) in Westport. The couple moved to Auckland in 1868, where Henry was the publican at several Auckland hotels including the Coach and Horses Hotel, Queen Street. They had ten children, eight sons and two daughters, eight of whom survived to adulthood.

Their father, Thomas Matthias Stebbing (1877-1931) was Henry and Hannah's seventh child. He married Claudia Isabel Hannken (1879-1970) in 1909 and the family lived for many years in Roberton Road, Avondale, the address given by Professor Paul Beadle as the home of the Stebbing family he received the photographs in this collection from.

References

The Stebbing legacy. https://www.audioculture.co.nz/articles/the-stebbing-legacy

New Zealand’s most iconic ad: The Great Crunchie Train Robbery. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/eyewitness/audio/2018805102/new-zealand-s-most-iconic-ad-the-great-crunchie-train-robbery

Brands, Margaret. Herald Island history family tree, fact page for Henry William Stebbing https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/person/tree/49599294/person/13001870138/facts.

Extent

0.4 metres (2 boxes )

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Custodial History

The album, loose photographs and ephemera were given to Professor Paul Beadle by members of the Stebbing family with an Australian cedar chest. Professor Beadle later donated the photographs to the University of Auckland Fine Arts Library. Annotations on the back of the photographs suggest that they were labelled by Philip Stebbing (1916-1997).