The area now known as the Diocese of Auckland was originally a part of a wider Diocese of New Zealand.
1814, the Church Missionary Society missionaries started work in the Bay of Islands, at Oihi and Te Puna, gradually spreading across the Far North of New Zealand. The earliest register starts in 1815 with the arrival of CMS ordained clergy who were able to baptize, marry and bury people according to the rites of the United Church of England and Ireland.
1841, George Augustus Selwyn was consecrated Bishop for the new Diocese of New Zealand. He was initially based at the CMS settlement at Te Waimate, Bay of Islands, and set about organizing a Church for both Māori and Pakeha settlers. Some of his ordained clergy were ordained in England, others were trained and ordained by Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand. Ministry to Māori under the CMS in some areas of the North of New Zealand, continued right up until the withdrawal of the CMS from New Zealand in 1892.
Māori were ordained as deacons and priests from 1853 onwards, forming a Diocesan Māori Mission from about the mid-1880’s. Some early registers are wholly Māori, some Pakeha; others are a mix, depending on how and were ministry was carried out. The early registers are complex and overlapping and not easily understood.
1859 the Diocese of New Zealand was formally constituted. Other Dioceses had been created - the Diocese of Christchurch 1856, Nelson, Wellington and Waiapu in 1858. The remainder, including Coromandel Waikato and Taranaki, remained as the Diocese of New Zealand until Bishop GA Selwyn resigned the Diocese in 1869. 1869 Diocese of Auckland When Bishop Selwyn returned to England in 1869, the new Bishop, William Garden Cowie, was installed as Bishop of the Diocese of Auckland in 1870.
There is no distinction in the registers between the Diocese of New Zealand and the Diocese of Auckland. Registers had not been centralised, and they generally remained in their local areas, and are usually with the records of each Diocese.
1926, the Diocese of Auckland was split, forming a new Diocese of Waikato, leaving Thames and the Coromandel in Auckland, by a line from the Waikato River and across the Hauraki Plains. Early registers from the Waikato CMS period especially remained with the Diocese of Auckland Archives.
