Looking for dead people

So the last time I was in a family history centre, I was hideously bored. Until I stumbled upon a page in a bicentennial celebration book for Otorohanga about my 4x great grandfather, Robert Ormsby. That was about a year ago. Yesterday, undeterred, I went back to a family history centre. I finally got a clue and took someone with me who knew what it was all about, (my new flatmate, she's great) and lo and behold I actually found some stuff interesting enough to keep me there for 4 whole hours. Yep, amazing, I know. Turns out my 4x great grandmother, Pianika, along with a bunch of other relatives who's relationship to me I haven't yet figured out, all voted in the first ever women's election back in 1893. Or at least they signed up for the electoral roll so I'm assuming they would have voted. Another one of my relatives, Henry Hoyte (possibly - I haven't quite confirmed that its actually him, but he has the same name) got on a boat in Ireland called the Carisbrook Castle, moved to Tauranga where he spent the rest of his life as a druggie/pharmacist. Maybe thats where I inherited my interest in chemistry from. In any case, researching dead people is a lot more fun when you have a clue what you're doing. I'm currently looking for one of my ancestors who was a greek countess. I tried googling her but that didn't do anything for me.