Australian Immigration Records
Australian Immigration Records
Australian immigration records are particularly well-kept, with information regarding a person’s name, birthdate, birthplace, occupation, marriage status, children and the number of children, and even a physical description of the person. For getting a picture of your family ancestry, the immigration archives of Australia far surpass the immigration information and are invaluable.
One reason for the solid ancestry information at the disposal of those searching Australian immigration records is because so many of the new immigrants to Australia in the early years of Aussie settlement were British convicts. Of the 1,000,000 or so people who immigrated to Australia and nearby islands from 1788 to 1900, over 160,000 were convicted of crimes back in Britain. If you want to keep a record of who the potential troublemakers are, you’re going to want a lot of information about them, especially a description.
Given that the practice was widespread, the ship manifest information to Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania gives families researching their forebears a vivid description of the people who founded the Australian branches of their family.
Don’t worry, though, since those 160 thousand people represent roughly 15% of the people arriving in Australia over the course of the 19th century, you’re much likely to have been descended from non-criminals. If they arrived in the second half of the 19th century, you’re probably on pretty safe ground.
Australian Ship Passengers
New immigrants to Australia fell into four different groups. The first group involved the aforementioned convicts, who often were sentenced to live in Australia for specific periods of time. Given the difficulties of ocean voyages, especially from England to Australia (on the far side of the world), many of those sentenced to the penal colony decided to remain as full-fledged Australians.
Assisted Immigration
Others who immigrated to Australia were “assisted immigrants”. An assisted immigrants had their passage paid all or in part by the British Government. Because the government had invested money in this immigration, bureaucratic records of these immigrants were fully kept.
Bounty Immigration
Similar to assisted immigrants, except the “bounty immigrant” had their passage paid for by an Australian colonist. Bounty immigrants agreed to perform work for the settlers who paid for their passage, generally agreeing they could perform the tasks needed of them (deceit became common later).
The term “bounty” referred to the bounty paid to the colonists as reimbursement for the fare, but also to fees paid the recruiting agent involved in finding bounty immigrants. A Government Board would decide on the immigrants’ arrival in Australia whether they qualified, but in the early years, only 1% were rejected as unsuitable for the agreed upon work. Corruption crept into the practice later.
Not only would the ships’ masters be paid for giving these people passage, but incentive rewards (bounties) were paid to recruiting agents back in the British Isles for their finding such people.
The Government was looking for skilled labourers and tradespeople to perform important work in the Australian colonies. Generally speaking, bounty immigrants were either single men, single women or married couples with the proper skills. Typically, a bounty immigrant was an agricultural laborer, ploughman or shepherd.
Less commonly, bounty immigrants would be skilled tradespeople like blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, needlewomen and brickmakers. As you might imagine, these were rare finds, but highly coveted workers.
Paying Immigrants
Finally, there were the occasional Australian immigrants who paid for their own passage. These were better off immigrants who might later pay for bounty immigrants and who came to Australia to make a greater fortune. Others, especially before 1835, were less well-off Australian immigrants who came for the promise of free land.
Australian Immigration
The period of Australian immigration between 1788 and roughly 1900 was a time of discovery, hardship and tragedy, not unlike the period of the American frontier and Old West periods. Searching through the Australian immigration records of your ancestors will bring you closer to the people who founded your family by facing the hardships and uncertainties of settling an unfamiliar land half a world away from everything they had known.
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Canada Ancestry Records
Canadian Ancestry Records
Canadian Immigration Records
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Genealogical Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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