| Canton Villages / South China Mission Council - Minute
books and correspondence were destroyed by the Missionaries prior to their enforced withdrawal from Communist
China in 1951. Copies of all minutes and most internal correspondence are held in the NZ Presbyterian Archives Missions
manuscript collection. A large amount of South China Mission correspondence had also previously been repatriated back
to New Zealand.
Copies of titles to the Mission properties were destroyed by the Japanese during World War Two while they were stored in a bank vault in Canton for "safe-keeping". Ironically if they had been left in the Manse safe at Fong Ts'uen near Canton, they would have survived safely. Photographic copies of some of the Title documents were held by the Church in NZ. This loss caused considerable difficulties when re-registration of the land had to be proved to the Communist authorities after 1948. During the Japanese occupation in World War Two, the Mission Council minute books and other records which were kept at the Mission compound at Kong Chuen were buried in sealed clay jars and suffered only minor water damage. The diaries of one Missionary (Sr Dorothy Robertson) were also buried at this time and she wrote in 1960 that they were too faded to read "due to their being buried during the war". |
| New Hebrides Mission - The NZ Presbyterian Mission Hospital
at Dip Point on Ambrim (Ambrym) Island burnt down in 1892 with the loss of all Medical Equipment and furnishings.
The Hospital and adjoining buildings were totally
destroyed by a volcanic eruption in December 1913 which absolutely
obliterated the area. All staff escaped safely in both conflagrations.
As Missionaries were more or less isolated on their individual islands, they each attended to their own Mission business in the early years although an annual Synod meeting of all Missionaries was held of which minutes survive. Most of the personal individual inwards and outwards correspondence files of the New Hebrides Missionaries (no doubt being classed as their own "personal correspondence") up to at least 1948 appears to have been lost. The New Hebrides inwards and outwards correspondence files in the PCNZ Missions manuscript records cover at least part of this period including annual reports written by the Missionaries and a large amount of earlier published extracts from their letters. |
| Punjab Mission - Early Mission Council correspondence and minutes (which were repatriated back to New Zealand at a later date by the Rev H Ryburn) have been attacked by large white ants which apparently even (to the absolute horror of the Mission Council Secretary) even managed to find their way into the large mission safe where the records were stored. |
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