This year, the Oamaru Mail (originally founded as the Evening Mail) turns 150 and the museum is putting on an exhibition to make the occasion.
However, Waitaki Museum curator Tracey Kearns said one issue in particular is missing from the museum’s extensive archives — and it is a mystery as to why.
‘‘There is one important copy of the Evening Mail that is not in our collection, or indeed in the collection of most major archival repositories.
‘‘The 13 August, 1877 edition is where the editor and owner George Jones accused the governor-general of promoting the Native Land Bill to acquire Maori land for his, and his friends, benefit.
‘‘The Crown took a criminal libel case against Jones and the newspaper. Jones was acquitted, and it is one of the first case-law examples about the freedom of the press in New Zealand.
‘‘I have located a copy in the Archives New Zealand Dunedin repository. As a 150-year-old document, and one which was originally a daily edition of a newspaper — so not designed to last one and a-half centuries — it is fragile, and folded, and requires extreme caution when handling.
‘‘At this point it has not been digitised, but if it is in future we'd be delighted to host a digital copy in our collection.
‘‘If there is a copy out there in a private collection, we'd be very glad to view it and potentially digitise it if possible.’’
The museum is also asking for any branded material such as mugs, notebooks, old lanyards, or any old rosters that might be interesting to describe or display.
The exhibition opens on Easter Weekend.
The Oamaru Mail was founded in 1876 and is one of the country’s oldest newspapers.
It has been owned by Allied Media, which also publishes the Otago Daily Times, since 2014.
