Rosemary Kopittke has been tracing her family history since 1985. A statistician by training, she has worked in that field as an hydrologist, teacher and biometrician. Her tertiary qualifications include a BSc (Mathematics) and BA (Computer Science) both from the University of Queensland. She currently works as a consultant for Gould Genealogy & History and is regularly invited to speak on findmypast and other topics at events in Australia and New Zealand.

She has published numerous indexes to cemeteries and government records though is probably best known for her work with husband Eric on the Emigrants from Hamburg to Australasia 1850–1879 publication. She is editor of Unlock the Past publications and author and contributor to several.

A current member of the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) Council and the Queensland FHS Management Committee, Rosemary is a Fellow of the Queensland Family History Society and in 2006 received the AFFHO Award for Meritorious Services to Family History.

Part 2 - Filtering

Instead of creating individual searches specifically designed for each individual dataset, the new findmypast sites use the basic search described in Part 1 of this blog in conjunction with a set of filters.

You can select filters before setting the Who, When, and Where search parameters if you already know how you wish to narrow your search AND/OR after you have done a search if you wish to filter the results that your search has returned.

There are five basic types of filter available –Country, Category of the record, Record collection, Record set, and Record type. All appear on the left side of your search screen.

Country filter – this lists the countries for which data appears. The figure in brackets following each country is the number of ‘records’ for that country (remember for digitised data each page is counted just as a single record). Initially, the list is in order of decreasing record count. You can select one or more countries by clicking the box next to the countries – those countries then go to the top of the list.

Category filter – all data is allocated one of eight categories. You can narrow a search by selecting one or more of these categories.

Record collection filter – depending on your search and other filters selected you will get a list here of record collections available. If you pre-select the Category of Newspapers, Directories & Social History then you get the Record collections as shown in the image on the right. Choose one or more of these to further refine a search.

Record set filter – following on the example in the previous paragraph, if you select the Directories & Almanacs collection then the list of record sets applicable will be listed (partial list in image on right). Selecting one or more of these will narrow your search to those particular sets of records.

Record Type filter – a very simple but powerful filter with just two options – ‘Records’ includes the data that is fully indexed (for which a search with first/last name is most appropriate) while ‘Documents’ is the digitised/PDF data (for which searching with Keywords is more effective).

Other filters – depending on the records you are searching other filters may also be available; for example, with some Australian data you can also filter by State and, should you be searching the UK census records, additional filters include Other Household Member, County, Birth Year, Birth County, Birth Place, Birth Town, City, Town, and Registration District.

Set as few or as many filters as you want. Try them out – both before and after a search – and see how they can let you control what you want from the data.

Try your new filtering skills today!

For more detailed information on how to best use findmypast.com.au you can buy a copy of Rosemary’s new book, New findmypast.com.au: Gateway to the World Collection

Professional genealogist Vicki Eldridge talks about 20th century electoral rolls and highlights some that were recently added to findmypast.

New Zealand led the way giving women the vote in 1893 closely followed by South Australia in 1894. Western Australia (1899) was the only other Australian colony to grant them the right prior to Federation. New South Wales followed in 1902, then Tasmania in 1903, Queensland in 1905 and Victoria was the last, holding out until 1908 but this only applied to Colonial/State elections.

The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 enfranchised all adult men and women of Australia albeit with some exceptions. The exceptions included indigenous Australians. From the time of the first Federal election in 1903 women’s’ names began appearing in the Commonwealth Electoral Rolls. Many jumped at the chance and registered very quickly, others were more reserved until it became compulsory to register in 1911. Read more about the voter qualification on the digital copy of the 1902 Act.

From 1903 Electoral Rolls were alphabetical list by name of the voter in each Polling Place in each Electoral Division in each State. The details were:

• Name – Last name and first and middle names in full. With the growing population the inclusion of any additional names is very helpful to a researcher. Sometimes there may be a qualification such as, sen. (senior) or jnr (junior), if two persons in the same household have the same name
• Residential address - Street and town (towns/suburbs are often abbreviated) or property name, sometime the house-name is included especially early in the century. On occasions the name of the suburb/town is not shown, perhaps on the assumption that it is the same as the Polling Place! This frequently occurs in cities but is not always logical
• Occupation - If a person remained at the one address over decades, it is quite possible that their occupation remained as given when they first enrolled. When space on a line became a problem the occupation may have be abbreviated - h.d. (home duties), drvr – driver, ftr tnr – fitter & turner
• Gender - nominally M (male) or F (female)

Recently on findmypast new editions of both State and Commonwealth electoral rolls have become available. The 1903 electoral roll has been added for NSW which is a great bonus. Electoral rolls for 1939 have been added for South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. This is a really special year as it’s before the state of World War Two. For any enrolled adult males who may not have returned these rolls may provide further family details.

Electoral rolls up until the more recent ones give us a very important extra piece of information over directories, the occupation of every person. This can be very revealing when looking at the records of a town, especially one built around a primary industry. A spread of years or even decades of a town may tell the story of the fortunes and population fluctuations in numbers but also in the occupations.

The supplementary list for Enngonia Division, in the Electoral District of Darling (NSW) 1903-4 is another example.  It only shows women! A search in Census Land & Surveys, filtered to Australia and Electoral Rolls then restricted to 1903 in the search fields with a keyword of Enngonia, returned a further page and a half. This time it was all the male voters. As women had only just been enfranchised, the original rolls were not integrated in all Districts with the new enrolments. Enngonia is a small rural town and district near the Queensland border, one might imagine that the women of the town said ‘Yes! Give me the vote!’ and participated in a mass registration.

New Zealand & Queensland records

These rolls are available in two different formats Records and Documents. Records are searchable databases of full transcriptions of the rolls, and return the details on individual persons (see image below). Documents on the other hand are fully searchable images so a page will have many names (as in the Enngonia image above).

Other changes

In Australia 1973 the ‘adult’ age was dropped from 21 to 18 and in 1994 the lists were compiled on a State wide alphabetical basis rather than the previous Division/sub Division.

Search the extensive electoral rolls on findmypast today.

Rosemary Kopittke has been tracing her family history since 1985. She is an experienced genealogist and currently works as a consultant for Gould Genealogy & History. Rosemary is regularly invited to speak on findmypast and other topics at events in Australia and New Zealand. Enjoy part one of Rosemary’s tips  on how to get the best out of findmypast.com.au.

Part 1 - Basic Searching

The greatly expanded Australia and New Zealand collection containing over 135 million records is now available for researchers to explore and discover amazing details about their family or local history.

The basic search as offered on both the home and search pages gives the option of searching by Who, When and Where with Keywords to assist in refining the search. What could be simpler?

It appears logical and straightforward to search using these criteria but what isn’t obvious to the new user is that the data actually includes 1.2 million pages of data which has been digitised – such as you would find on Trove. That means it does not have fields which are recognised as names, places or dates – the computer simply knows it as text. With this in mind let’s look at how we can use this search to get us started on locating the information we seek.

First/Last Name – it is clear this is the place to enter names of those you are researching. It is not obvious though that you can also enter place names, occupations and other information here and the search will find matches in data that has been scanned (not, however, in fully indexed data) – it does work, try it for yourself. Be aware though that, for scanned data, it will simply find records where the words you enter in First/Last Name appear on the same page of the document!

Year range – a year range covering the period you wish to search; if you just wish to search a single year then enter it into ‘From’ and once you hit the Search button the ‘To’ year will automatically fill

Keywords – words you want to appear in the record (can include names), perhaps an occupation, address or similar. Currently, these must be words that are adjacent to each other in the data and in the exact order. So, for example, a search using amos wickerson and another using wickerson amos will return quite different results (any intervening punctuation such as commas and full stops is ignored).

Name variants – selecting the name variants will return variants for both the first/last names; for example, a first name of William will also find Willy and Wm as well as just the initial W.

Wildcard searches – these can be very helpful for detecting names where you know that spelling or transcription problems are likely to occur; for example, Kopittke can be recorded as Kopittke, Kopitke, Kopitkie (and many others). The use of a wildcard, ‘?’ for a single character or ‘*’ for a string of characters of any length, can be useful in these situations.

Try these new skills and search now!

For more detailed information on how to best use findmypast.com.au you can buy a copy of Rosemary’s new book, New findmypast.com.au: Gateway to the World Collection

Written by professional genealogist Vicki Eldridge, this wonderful blog talks about 19th century electoral rolls and which are available on findmypast.com.au

Early on in my researching life I rather looked on Electoral Rolls at face value – considering them along the lines of directories providing a name and address at a particular time. I subsequently discovered they could actually tell me more and in many cases provide a clue to further records. Electoral rolls should be considered as a census substitutes particularly as we lack such things in our Australasian records.

Yesterday, as today, a person had to ‘qualify’ for the right to vote but the rules were not always the same. The qualifications, as applied at the time, may add further to your family’s history should you find an ancestor on an electoral roll.

Each colony, including New Zealand, had its own electoral laws so it is important not to apply the rules in one colony across all the others. There were no national qualifications during the 19th century. For example, while manhood suffrage was introduced in New South Wales in 1858 it was still in conjunction with the property-based qualifier. This meant it was possible for a man to vote in more than one district and therefore appear on more than one roll. One man, one vote did not happen until 1893 in New South Wales.

Elections and therefore rolls were necessary for City of Sydney elections which were first held on 1 November 1842. The franchise applied to adult males, occupying “a house warehouse counting house or shop” and paying rates on property within the boundaries of the municipality (then also the Sydney Police District) with an annual value of £25. While there are no electoral rolls for this election, the rate assessment books, the basis on which the ratepayer qualified, survive from 1845 and are available online at the City of Sydney Archives. (See also Hilary Golder’s “Short Electoral History of the City of Sydney Council 1842-1992” for further clarification.

The first New South Wales Legislative Council elections were held in 1843 and cast a wider net not only in area but also by reducing the annual value of the property thus the franchise was for all males:

- Over the age of 21 and a British subject and, who either owned freehold property valued at no less than £200, or occupied a dwelling house (leasehold) with an annual value equal of or exceeding £20

- It was also possible for one person to qualify in multiple electorates if he met the criteria in each

This was varied in 1851 to £100 value for freehold property or a dwelling house or leasehold with an annual of no less than £10 or a pastoral lease. This was extended prior to the 1856 election to include those men receiving an annual salary of £100, and those paying £40 per annum for board and lodgings or £10 per annum for lodgings only.

In 1858 the Electoral Act (NSW) extended the franchise to all residents while retaining the property qualification for non-residents. Thus, every adult (over 21) male, with six months residency in an electorate prior to making the Electoral list, who was also either ‘natural born’ (born in the colony) or had been naturalised and had lived in the colony for three years, was qualified. The property qualification meant that a person could also vote in an electorate where he was not resident. As elections were held on different days in different electorates, this facilitated those who qualified for more than one vote.

The information shown in the rolls varies little through to 1890 and were compiled under:

• Electoral District and gave the voter’s name, residence, qualification (to be on that roll) and, the location of the property giving him the qualification – this may be the full residential address or the address of other ‘property

For New South Wales surviving electoral rolls for the later part of the 19th century are available at the State Library and State Records of NSW has some but not all. This similarly applies also to the other States and New Zealand where they can be found in their local repositories.

New Zealand

The first elections were held in 1853 with voting rights granted to all male British subjects aged 21 years and over who owned freehold property worth £50 or more; or, paid at least £10 a year to lease property; or lived in a house with an annual rental value of at least £10 (in a town) or £5 (outside a town).

In 1867 all Maori men over 21 could vote for their own representatives and from 1879 the franchise was extended to all males of 21 and over regardless of whether they owned or rented property. In 1889 plural voting was abolished; one man, one vote.

Women were enfranchised in 1893.

New Zealand Electoral Rolls for the 19th century start from 1853 on findmypast. Search these wonderful records today.

You will also find Queensland State Electoral Rolls pre 1900 on findmypast.com.au . The 1895 Roll has a bonus for anyone with ancestors in Queensland. In addition to showing how they qualified in terms of property, the roll includes the voter’s age!

Further references may be found in the collection of Government Gazettes on findmypast. For example: This from the New Zealand Government Gazette of 1880 p. 1262-3. Polling places could change or be changed; sometimes the Polling place was a residence of business premises….perhaps belonging to an ancestor…

An interesting account of Cecil Patrick Healy’s family history by Shauna Hicks. Cecil was a Gold Medallist at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.

One hundred years ago at the 1912 Summer Olympics Cecil Healy won a gold medal as part of the men’s relay swimming team and he also won silver for the 100 metre freestyle swim. He was part of the combined Australia and New Zealand team, all under an Australasian banner.

As well as swimming, Healy also held six Australian sprint titles, was a pioneer of surfing and had been honoured for his bravery in surf rescues. Healy as an Olympic swimmer was inducted into the Sports Australia Hall of Fame in 1981, but he has another claim to being remembered. He is our only Olympian gold medallist ever to be killed in action. Healy lost his life on the Somme in 1918 just 74 days before the Armistice was signed.

Healy descended  from well known early NSW legal families, and on his father’s side there is a convict connection.

Cecil Patrick Healy was born on 28 November 1881 in Sydney, the fourth child of Patrick Joseph Healy, a barrister and Annie Louisa nee Gallott. Older siblings were Florence, Harold, Claude with younger siblings John, Reginald and Eric.

His parents were married on 26 December 1868 at St Mary’s temporary cathedral in Sydney. It was  Annie’s second marriage, being the widow of Alphonse Bede Girard, also a solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW. Alphonse had died in June of that same year leaving a son James, two years old.

Cecil’s father Patrick died at the family home in Darlinghurst on 7 September 1895 aged only 52 years. Cecil was 13 years old at the time and his mother Annie had become a widow for the second time.

Patrick’s headstone in the Waverley cemetery gives his birth date as 21 May 1843. His parents were Nicholas Healy and Mary Ann Clarke who married in 1832 and had a number of children after settling in the West Maitland area. Nicholas was a former convict from County Clare who had arrived on the Minerva in 1819 after being sentenced to transportation for life.

For many years Nicholas Healy was a storekeeper at West Maitland and in 1851 he opened the Governor Bourke Inn at West Maitland. He died in 1861 after a ’severe and protracted illness’. His wife Mary Ann died in 1884 and is buried in the Waverley cemetery.

Cecil’s mother Annie Louisa Gallot was the eldest daughter of James Ambrose Gallot, a solicitor and Caroline Sarah Horsey’s nine children. James and Caroline married in 1842 in St Andrew’s Scots Church Sydney and shortly after they moved to Melbourne where some of their children were born. The family moved back to Sydney ca 1860. James died in Sydney in 1893 and Caroline in 1904.

Sources: findmypast.com.au; Australian Dictionary of Biography Online; Wikipedia; Sports Australia Hall of Fame; TROVE; NSW BDMs; State Records NSW; The Normile Letters

Search the wonderful Waverley & South Head Cemetery Transcriptions to see the records mentioned above or to search for your own family history.

Read about the Waverley & South Head Cemetery Transcriptions for more information about these interesting records.

Read this great account by Carole Riley, about the life of our very own Olympic swimming star, Murray Rose.

I had never been much interested in sport until the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Sydney was such a happy place while the Olympics were on, and my husband and I attended as many events as we could. The London Olympics has brought some of that excitement back, and I’ve been looking back to the last time Australia held the Olympics, in Melbourne in 1956. My Dad remembers going down to Melbourne for those games, and the beginning of the Golden Age of Australian swimming with Murray Rose and Dawn Fraser. Murray Rose died earlier this year.

At 17 years old, the Melbourne Olympics was Murray’s first, and much was expected of him, as with fellow team-member Dawn Fraser. He won gold in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay, the 400m freestyle and the 1500m freestyle. I was present at the final of the 1500m in Sydney and I know how exciting it is. Murray Rose was a young hero.

It turns out Murray wasn’t born in Australia at all. He was born in Birmingham on 6th January 1939. His father was Ian Falconer Rose, a copywriter, born in 1913 to Alexander Rose and Ada Falconer. His mother was Eileen Folwell, born in 1907 in Leicester, daughter of Arthur Ernest Folwell, a pork butcher and Florence Langton. Ian and Eileen married in early 1938 in Hove, near Brighton. To avoid the coming war in Europe Ian got a friend in Sydney to cable a fictitious job offer to enable their immigration to Australia. They departed Southampton aboard the Strathmore on the 23rd December 1939, just before Christmas. Ian quickly got work and the family moved into a flat in Double Bay, near the local pool. Coach Sam Herford discovered the fiver-year-old Murray and told his parents he could be a champion. Murray was soon breaking records.

Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 (findmypast.com.au)

Ian had been advised in 1939 that his poor health could be improved by a vegetarian diet, and his health improved so dramatically that Eileen followed suit. They brought up their son the same way, and Murray became known as ‘the seaweed streak’ for his use of seaweed supplements. Ian published a book about his son’s success, ‘Faith, love and seaweed’, in 1963.

In the 1960 Olympics in Rome Murray again won the 400m freestyle, becoming the only swimmer ever to win this event twice in a row until Ian Thorpe in 2000-2004. Murray won silver in the 1500m freestyle to fellow Australian John Konrads.

Murray moved to the USA and after finishing a degree in drama and television at the University of Southern California started a career in film. He was filming ‘Ride the Wild Surf’ with Fabian and Barbara Eden when trials were held for the 1964 Olympic team, and despite breaking two more world records and appeals was refused admission. He went back to his acting career but he later claimed he was not passionate enough about acting to give it the commitment it required.

Swimming was his first love. In his later years he swam in Masters’ series, and worked with the Rainbow Club, an organisation to give swimming lessons to children with mental and physical disabilities. He became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2000 for his services to swimming, and later that year was one of the eight flag-bearers of the Olympic Flag at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. An avenue at the Sydney Olympic complex was named after him. Murray Rose died in his Sydney home on 15th April 2012 of leukaemia, aged 73. He had been married twice and had a child from each marriage.

Perhaps if the Rose family had stayed in England he may never have discovered or developed the talent that made Murray Rose one of our most famous athletes.

Sources

findmypast.com.au – censuses, passenger lists, BDMs indexes

AOC Official site, The Independent, New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Internet Archive

You will find information on Murray Rose’s family history on findmypast.com.au in censuses, passenger lists and BDMs indexes.

Learn about your ancestors’ travels across the ocean with this informative blog by Kerry Farmer. Try searching the Passenger Lists leaving the UK 1890 - 1960 today and see what you can find.

It’s a common experience for genealogists – tracking ancestors forward through the UK censuses – to find that suddenly the whole family seems to vanish from the records. Eventually it might occur to us to wonder, did they migrate somewhere? If so, where did they go?

This is where the Passenger lists leaving UK 1890–1960 on findmypast.com.au can be so useful. These are the digitised and indexed lists of passengers embarking on long-distance voyages made from all British ports (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales). If the ship stopped en route at additional ports, such as in Europe, passengers disembarking at those stops are also included. The original documents are held in The National Archives UK in series BT 27 (BT = Board of Trade). Findmypast has indexed together all departures from all British ports, allowing researchers to enter their ancestor’s name of interest and determine the destination.

The most common way of searching for immigrant ancestors is to search the archives of the destination country. But which government archives to check? In the case of passengers to Australia, the individual colonies (and then states) administered immigration separately until 1922, after which immigration control became a function of the Commonwealth Government. (A further complication when looking for immigration records is that, just as today, immigration is typically handled at the first port of call.)

Using findmypast.com.au, there is a better way. Look under ‘Travel & migration’ and select the record set ‘Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960’. I was searching for the migration of my grandmother, Olwena KELLETT, who was born in Lancashire in 1901. I entered her name (with first name variants) and searched between 1901 and 1907. It is a free search – not even requiring a subscription to do the search.

I selected ‘name variants’ – which also allows for the fact that some passenger lists only identify people by an initial. I found her in 1905, where she travelled from Britain to South Africa.

The above information is as far as you can go with a free search. It requires a subscription or PayAsYouGo credits to see the transcription of the results or full image of the page. The amount of information available on the passenger lists varies widely over time. Some only have minimal information about the passengers, while others include their dates of birth, occupations, and addresses in Britain before departure as well as their ultimate destinations overseas.

I had already found the record of the family’s arrival in Australia, and had assumed they had travelled on that same ship from London to Sydney. But instead little Olwena travelled with her mother to South Africa first, and then 2 years later the family travelled on to Sydney.

As many of the passenger indexes available in Australia concentrate on ships that came from British ports, ancestors who travelled first to places like South Africa or North America might not be included in the indexes of arrivals in Australia. Looking instead at the departures from Britain might help us understand what happened.

Just as today, not every person travelling was an immigrant. Apart from the seamen, many of our ancestors (such as merchants) travelled for work and people travelled for holidays. Families who had already migrated travelled back to Britain to visit family and friends. In other words, a surprising number of our ancestors appear in passenger lists crossing the oceans. Using the indexes of passengers leaving Britain provides a very useful additional way of tracking their journeys.

Getting Started In Family History

By Shauna Hicks

Shauna worked in government for over 35 years primarily in libraries and archives including the State Library of Queensland, the John Oxley Library in Brisbane, the Queensland State Archives, the National Archives of Australia in Canberra and Public Record Office Victoria in Melbourne. She is currently Director of her own research and consultancy business.

Shauna has been tracing her own family history since 1977 and is a Fellow of the Queensland Family History Society. In 2009 Shauna received the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) Services to Family History Award for her achievements in Queensland, Canberra and Victoria.

Shauna Hicks on her first day of school

It’s fairly easy to start looking for your ancestors these days with many online resources to give you a head start. Your local genealogy society is also a great place to see resources that are not online and you will meet others happy to assist with your research.

First you need to gather as much family information as you can from within your own family working backwards from yourself. Once you have basic information you can then obtain birth, death and marriage certificates to help you confirm those family findings, and to progress your research further back with clues from the certificates.

Note all the information on the certificates – not just the names. Occupations and addresses are also important for placing families within their communities. For example, with an address you can then use records such as post office directories and electoral rolls to trace where your ancestors lived over time. Occupations may also be recorded. For example, in findmypast.com.au there is a wide range of these resources for every Australian State and Territory as well as New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.

Another thing to note on death certificates is where a person was buried. There may be burial records or transcribed monumental inscriptions from tombstones with more information and there is an ever growing list of these records online. As most of my ancestors are buried in Brisbane I find using the Bulimba, Toowong and South Brisbane (Dutton Park) MIs on findmypast.com.au really handy, especially as I now live in Melbourne.

I try to document all aspects of my ancestors’ lives, and school records may be useful for those early years. School admission registers usually record a date of birth, a parent’s name and occupation, address and of course, the child’s progress at school. The Queensland Family History Society (QFHS) has been indexing school admission records in Queensland for many years and I really like being able to access the indexes now through findmypast.com.au. I recently did a search to see if I could find when my father first went to school and where. He started at Greenslopes State School in 1939 and moved to Buranda State School in 1940. I knew about Buranda but not Greenslopes.

What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself in an extensive database on findmypast.com.au! I shouldn’t have been surprised as school records are on open access after 30 years and it’s been more than that since I went to school. I hadn’t realised that my old primary school had published a 50th anniversary book but it has been indexed by QFHS and my name is listed. I must have a look next time I visit Brisbane and go to the QFHS Library.

What I am now wondering is if there are any school photos of my father out there somewhere. I have very few photos of him as a child and would love to see more. My parents, on the other hand, took many photos of me and this one of me all dressed up for my first day of school brings back memories!

While it is good to trace your ancestors further back, don’t forget to also document your own life and that of your parents for future generations. Capture those stories now!

www.shaunahicks.com.au

How findmypast.com.au can help you

By Rosemary Kopittke

Rosemary has been tracing her family history since 1985 - her research interests lie primarily in Australia, England and Scotland. A statistician by training, she has worked in that field as an hydrologist, teacher and biometrician. Her tertiary qualifications include a BSc (Mathematics) and BA (Computer Science) both from the University of Queensland. She currently works as a consultant for Gould Genealogy & History and is a speaker with the Unlock the Past team.

She has published numerous indexes to cemeteries and government records though is probably best known for her work with her husband Eric on the Emigrants from Hamburg to Australasia 1850-1879 publication.

A current member of the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) Council and the Queensland FHS Management Committee, Rosemary is a Fellow of the Queensland Family History Society and in 2006 received the AFFHO Award for Meritorious Services to Family History.

Findmypast.com.au is just 18 months old and has made huge strides during that time with 50 million records available for searching already – and soon that will more than double, making it the place to visit for research into Australian and New Zealand families.

The records cover a wide range of material, and I will mention some key areas here:

Directories & Almanacs

There are almost 160 data sets totalling 10 million records in this category – covering all Australian States and New Zealand. Family history relies on us knowing where our family was living and we can learn where they lived and moved from these records – their address, occupation and perhaps even find an advertisement for their business.

Electoral Rolls & Censuses

Electoral rolls are, for the most part, the nearest thing Australians and New Zealanders have to census records and hence are an extremely important resource for both local and family historians. On findmypast.com.au you will find records for all Australian states and for New Zealand as well – many millions of records with many more coming.

Government Records

Mostly researchers consider the government, police and education gazettes to be irrelevant and uninteresting but that is definitely not the case; they contain information about people we would never find in other records. It is here that we can learn extremely interesting facts about all our ancestors – land transactions, intestacies, insolvencies, brands, stolen fortunes, intriguing descriptions and much, much more. With over 20 million entries, this is the largest set of records in the collection.

Military Records

As we approach some significant military celebrations many researchers are seeking information on their family who served in various wars for both Australia and New Zealand. Apart from lists of names, the records available here often include short biographies and photographs – perhaps ones we have never seen before.

Among the 665 data sets currently available, other important records include Rookwood Cemetery (233,160 entries), Victoria Funeral Notices (119,048 entries), Cemetery Burials and Memorial Inscriptions for Victoria 1835-1997 (182,600 entries), Queensland School Pupils Indexes (almost 1.3 million entries), Queensland Railway Employees (367,651 entries) and the Emigrants from Hamburg to Australasia 1850-1879 database. There is room too for many small data sets which you may not otherwise find – one interesting set is that for the marriages on the Pitcairn Islands 1824-1854 with just 50 entries!

Together, large and small, they make a hugely valuable, unique resource for those researching down under.

Police and Government Gazettes

By Carole Riley

Carole grew up in Dubbo in the Central West of New South Wales. Her mother’s family are farmers and graziers from the Blayney area, descended from Irish and English immigrants; and professionals from Albury and New Zealand, descended from Scots. Her father is descended from part-European Fijians. This combination of nationalities and cultures has provided a varied and interesting genealogical background, and almost unlimited research opportunities!

Carole is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists to whose standards and code of ethics she aspires. She currently serves on the Council of the Society of Australian Genealogists and is the Convenor of their IT Committee. She is also the founder of the Sydney User Group of The Master Genealogist (TMG).

Here Carole, professional genealogist from Heritage Genealogy, explains how Police and Government Gazettes can enrich your research.

You may not have thought to use Government and Police Gazettes to help with your family research, and I want to convince you otherwise. There is an enormous amount of information in them, and they deserve to be more widely used. They can add that detail that brings our ancestors to life, and they can help solve many family mysteries. If your ancestor worked for the government; leased or purchased land from the Crown; went bankrupt or insolvent; dissolved a business partnership; had a license to run a pub, sell liquor, cut timber or run an auction; was a convict or was assigned one; signed a petition; had unclaimed mail; registered a livestock brand; or died, there is a very good chance there will be a mention in a government gazette. You can find the laws and regulations that ruled your ancestor’s life, whether a landholder, a convict, or a government contractor, and how the censuses were performed.

I have used government gazettes to answer family mysteries, or at least to point me in the right direction; particularly in rural areas whose newspapers have not been digitised by Trove. Lists of livestock brands can act as a directory in places where directories do not exist, or have not been digitised. Family stories about rural properties can be resolved by finding forfeited conditional purchases. Convict assignment records have mostly been destroyed, but they are listed in the government gazettes. Police gazettes were issued to police stations to keep the police up to date, and were never intended for public access. They contain warrants for arrest; persons wanted for questioning; suspicious characters to look out for, and so on. If there was a warrant for your ancestors’ arrest; or they were recently released from gaol; or wanted for questioning; or a known associate of someone wanted for questioning, then they will be mentioned and described in enviable detail.

Police gazettes do not only contain criminals. Victims of a wide variety of crimes such as thieves, embezzlers and wife deserters; missing persons, including children; inquests; and people reported dead for whom no relative could be found are also listed. I have often found the answer to a mystery involving a missing husband or father in a police gazette, usually because the wife has reported him missing and there is a warrant for his arrest. If the person is eventually found a subsequent gazette will report it and so the mystery is solved. Sometimes they turn up in another town with a tattooed woman, sometimes in another colony, and sometimes dead in a river.

The gazettes for the colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand for varying date ranges are available in findmypast.com.au, with more to come. If the years you need aren’t available yet, keep trying. Make sure you use the keyword search to find names rather than putting the name in the name field for all gazettes, and make sure you search other States, as the person may have been headed there when they disappeared.