Ramsden was a New Zealander of English descent from the Wairarapa. He was the eldest of three children of Henry Oakes Ramsden, an Englishman, and his New Zealand-born wife, Sophia Jane Harris. Ramsden's schooling was erratic due to asthma and tuberculosis. After a period of clerical and farming work he found his vocation in journalism. Ramsden worked for the Wairarapa Age, Auckland Star and the New Zealand Times in Wellington before joining the Sydney Morning Herald in the mid-1920s.While working for the Auckland Sun in 1927 he became deeply involved in Maori affairs. He had a daughter, Irihapeti Merenia Ramsden, by Merenia (Billie) Manawatu, of Ngai Tahu and Rangitane descent, from Koukourarata.
In 1934 Ramsden joined the rival Associated Newspapers Limited. King (1998): 418 reports that 'Over the following years he attended lectures in anthropology at the University of Sydney and founded the Pacific Islands Club (later Society), becoming its first secretary. He travelled with the expatriate American adventure writer Charles Nordhoff in the course of a research trip to Tahiti and French Polynesia in 1935, and became president of the Anthropological Society of New South Wales in 1936-37. He was now reading - and writing extensively in the press - about Pacific and Australasian history and became a major user of Sydney's Mitchell Library. His first publications, Marsden and the Missions (1936) and James Busby: the prophet of Australian viticulture (1940), were researched and written in this period.' Ramsden also published articles in the Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings at this time.
In 1942 Ramsden left Sydney to work for the Press in Christchurch and became an active member of the Polynesian Society and PEN. He became increasingly engaged in Maori affairs and King (1998): 418 records that he 'wrote four more books over the next decade: Busby of Waitangi (1942), Strange Stories from the South Seas (1944), Sir Apirana Ngata and Maori Culture (1948), and Rangiatea (1951). Two further books begun in the 1940s, biographies of Te Puea and Sir Peter Buck, were not completed.'
King (1998): 418 concludes of Ramsden's last decade: 'His reputation grew as the country's leading commentator on Maori affairs in newspapers and on radio. After 1949 he became an influential confidant to the National Party prime minister, Sidney Holland, and the minister of Maori affairs, Ernest Corbett. He was also known and respected by Maori on marae throughout the country and attended the annual round of major hui. His collection of papers, which included the Buck-Ngata correspondence, would become one of the most important repositories of the history of Maori in the twentieth century.'
Ramsden divorced his first wife, Evelyn nee Graham, with whom he had one son, in 1948 and in the same year married Henrietta Merenia Meteherangi Collins (née Manawatu) of Ngai Tahu and Rangitane. They divorced in 1953 and after her death, Ramsden brought up their three children.
(Source: Adapted from Michael King, 'Ramsden, George Eric Oakes 1898-1962', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume 4 (1921-1940), (1998): 417-418).
