C. Boyer has edited four books that include lists of migrants: Ships’ Passenger Lists: The South (1538–1825); National and New England (1600–1825); New York and New Jersey (1600–1825); Pennsylvania and Delaware (1641–1825).The previous chapter outlined the means by which you can trace any ancestors who moved to Britain from overseas countries – but the journey was not just one way. Millions of Britons left these shores both voluntarily and at the forcible insistence of the government (mainly convicted criminals), and so a sudden disappearance of an ancestor from your family tree might be explained by looking into the many emigration records that are described in this chapter.
When researching your family tree you may come across an ancestor who migrated from Britain and Ireland to settle in another country. People elected to migrate abroad for a variety of reasons. Many went in search of a better life to escape poverty, others to flee religious persecution; some went unwillingly, convicted of a crime and transported to one of Britain’s colonies. Although the Industrial Revolution increased employment in urban areas through the nineteenth century, many people in rural areas found their livelihood threatened as the mass production of textiles replaced many rural cottage industries. One way to escape this was to emigrate. Indeed, many poor emigrants may have been given state assistance when seeking a new life abroad.
‘Hundreds of thousands emigrated in search of a better life.’
The most popular locations where Britons chose to start a new life were North America, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa. After the end of the First World War the British government began officially to support migration. In 1919 a scheme was introduced to aid the migration of ex-servicemen and in 1922 the Empire Settlement Act was introduced, providing support for families to migrate to the dominions. During this period the government felt that the British race as a whole would benefit from sending people away from overcrowded cities to a better quality of life and helping single women to find husbands in dominions where women were a minority. Another less known policy of migration adopted by the British government was the child migration scheme to Australia, South Africa and Canada, popular from the late nineteenth century onwards. This will be discussed in further detail below.
Many of the early New World settlers were Puritans trying to find a home to practise their religion without fear of persecution. The most famous example of this was the arrival of the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, in 1620, carrying a group of Puritan pilgrims.
It is estimated that many hundreds of thousands emigrated from the British Isles since the beginning of the seventeenth century. One of the first and most famous emigrant settlements was that of Jamestown, founded in Virginia, North America, in 1607. A group of 108 settlers left from London and established the first successful permanent English settlement in the New World. Soon after that date many more groups of English settlers began arriving and colonizing the New World and also the islands of the West Indies.
Thousands of emigrants arrived in the New World during the course of the seventeenth century, seeking a better life. The numbers did not decline after the American War of Independence in 1776 and the next century saw further large waves of migrants arriving from all parts of Europe, including Britain and Ireland. Indeed, the ties between the United States and Ireland have remained strong to the present day as many Americans are still aware of their Irish ancestry. Migration from Ireland was particularly strong in the nineteenth century as poverty was so rife and, in particular, many people left to escape the devastating effects of the Great Irish Famine in the 1840s. It is estimated that approximately 1.5 million Irish migrants moved to the United States and Canada in the ten years following the famine. The population of Ireland declined steadily from the 1840s due to migration, and this situation was only reversed in the 1960s. The success of the Industrial Revolution in Britain meant that the level of emigration was less severe but the numbers were still substantial. Some estimate that around 2.4 million English people emigrated between 1551 and 1851 and a further 3 million Britons migrated between 1870 and 1920 alone (although approximately 25 per cent of these later migrants returned to Britain for a variety of reasons).
The other popular destinations for British and Irish migrants were Australia, Tasmania (originally Van Diemen’s Land) and New Zealand, although initially many arrived there against their will through the ‘transportation’ system. Indeed convicts were also transported to North America until the War of Independence in 1776, although the numbers were far smaller than those transported to Australia.
Settlement in Australia didn’t begin until the late eighteenth century. The British government decided to use Australia as the new penal colony (after losing America) and the first fleet arrived on 26 January 1788 (the date now celebrated as Australia Day). The fleet contained 1,500 new settlers, half being convicts. They landed in Sydney Cove and on 7 February 1788 the British colony of New South Wales was formally declared. Large-scale migration to Australia began from this time and the numbers arriving increased rapidly after 1815, when government policy actively encouraged settlement by ensuring free settlers could arrive and purchase land at minimal costs. The discovery of gold in the 1850s was another important factor behind the decision to move to Australia. Convicts continued to be sent to Australia until the system was abolished in 1868, by which time over 150,000 had been sent to Australia and Tasmania (around 30 per cent of whom were Irish). The numbers of free settlers leaving Britain and Ireland were much larger, however, and continued into the twentieth century.
The Board of Trade retained outgoing passenger lists on a similar basis to incoming lists discussed in Chapter 22. They are found in The National Archives series BT 27 and were kept from 1890 to 1960, detailing the name of each passenger, their age and occupation. The series is currently being transcribed and made available in digital format online at www.findmypast.com. At the time of publication all lists had been placed on the website from 1890 to 1939. The digitization of this series has greatly facilitated its use as it is now possible to search for an individual by name. Previously it was only possible to find an individual if the name of the ship he or she travelled on was known. It is possible to search the index free of charge, but viewing the data will incur a cost. The series covers the years of mass migration between 1890 and 1914. It was only after 1914 that migration began to be controlled on a stricter basis.
British emigration to New Zealand also began in the nineteenth century, after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. Initially, emigration to New Zealand was less popular than to other parts of the world and the New Zealand Company had to actively encourage migration to the islands in rural England and Scotland by promoting New Zealand and offering free passage to some skilled workers. Economic assistance to encourage migration was also provided by the territorial governments of New Zealand from the 1850s onwards, resulting in a large increase in settlers arriving from this period onwards, although the numbers arriving were in tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands. The numbers dropped towards the end of the nineteenth century due to an economic depression in New Zealand, but they recovered at the beginning of the twentieth century when further groups of British and Irish migrants arrived with the assistance of the British government.
It may be possible to trace a migrant, depending on when they left and where they chose to go, through many British archives and the archives of the destination country.
The majority of records that list those emigrating through the centuries can be found in The National Archives. They are scattered amongst records found in the Treasury, Board of Trade, Colonial and Home Office series. Unfortunately, there is no single index to these many records and reference may have to be made to a number of different records.
Passports were not required as an official travel document in Britain until 1914. Hence, prior to that date, only a very small minority applied for such documentation even though the first records of those applying for passports begin in the sixteenth century. The earliest passports were used as licences to travel abroad and relevant records are found in The National Archives. Series E 157 contains registers of people applying for such licences from 1572 onwards; SP 25/111 has lists of passes issued during the Cromwellian Interregnum (between 1650 and 1653). Calendars of State Papers for the eighteenth century also include relevant records.
If you are researching an emigrant during the nineteenth century there are certain sources found within the Colonial Office records that may assist with research. A number of series specifically relate to emigration departments of the Colonial Office:
• Emigration Original Correspondence, 1817–96, in CO 384. This series includes letters and other documents from individuals who had settled or wished to settle in the popular destinations of Canada, the West Indies and Australia, along with other colonies.
• Emigration registers specific to North America are in CO 327 (1850–63) and CO 328 (1864–68).
• A Land and Emigration Commission was established in 1833 in order to provide assistance to would-be emigrants by free passages and land grants; the records are in CO 386 (1833–94).
Other records in The National Archives that may be of use are those created after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This law also allowed for parishes to assist their poor parishioners to emigrate. Records can be found in MH 12 (1834–90), arranged alphabetically under county and the new poor law unions. Hence it is only feasible to use this series if the name of the union is known. Additional information can be found in MH 13/252 (correspondence from 1853 to 1854 between the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners and the General Board of Health) and MH 19/22 (Poor Law Authorities and Emigration Commissioners correspondence between 1836 and 1876).
As is well known, many British and Irish convicted of criminal offences were punished by being transported abroad, firstly to North America and later to Australia. At the time this was seen as a humane form of punishment, saving convicted criminals from the death penalty.
The starting date of this penal system was 1615, with criminals being transported to North America or the West Indies for a number of years to work on the new plantations, although many would not return. It is believed that approximately 150,000 British and Irish individuals were transported to North America, up until the American Revolution in 1776. If you find an ancestor who met this fate you may be able to trace his conviction and subsequent transportation. For details concerning researching in surviving criminal records turn to Chapter 27. However, it is also possible to ascertain details relating to the actual transportation. Fortunately, there is a large amount of information that has been published.
The best place to begin is by consulting Peter Wilson Coldham’s book The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775. Coldham has compiled lists of all those men and women who were transported using the available contemporary sources held at The National Archives. Most usefully he details at which court or session the individual was convicted, allowing further research into these sets of records. The name of the ship the convict was transported on is also listed, where known.
After 1776 an alternative destination for transporting convicts had to be found, and by 1787 Australia had become the chosen destination. As mentioned, the first group of convicts arrived in January 1788 and many more continued to arrive until the system was abolished in 1868 (although few arrived after 1857). During this time approximately 160,000 convicts were resettled from Britain and Ireland.
Records of those transported can be found in the UK and also in Australia. Unfortunately, unlike the records for North America, there is no uniform comprehensive published index for these sources. Rather, it is only feasible to search the original records if you are aware of the trial details (where and when the convict was tried) or the name of the ship they sailed on. However, there are useful published sources for specific transportation records:
‘Transportation was seen as a humane alternative to the death penalty.’
• Lists of the very first convicts arriving in the first and second fleets have been published by P. G. Fidlon and R. J. Ryan, The First Fleeters (Sydney, 1981) and R. J. Ryan, The Second Fleet Convicts (Sydney, 1982) respectively.
• David T. Hawking’s Bound for Australia (Chichester, 1987) is a useful overview of the subject and contains many transcriptions of relevant records.
• The Genealogical Society of Victoria has compiled an index to the New South Wales Convict Indents and Ships, detailing the names of the convicts who arrived in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land between 1788 and 1842. This is available in microfiche form at The National Archives.
Various censuses and musters were taken in Australia by the British government during the early nineteenth century and many of these have been published and can be consulted at The National Archives and other large reference libraries. If you locate your ancestor amongst these sources the record should also provide conviction details and which ship your ancestor arrived on. These are the key details needed for consulting original records for transportation, such as the volumes of transportation registers found in The National Archives series HO 11 (arranged by ship name and date of travel) or the trial records themselves.
Trial records are very formal in nature and provide limited information of genealogical relevance. Often loved ones of the convict would petition the government for mercy. Additionally, some wives would request to join their convicted husbands in the colonies. Such records give very useful insights into the personal circumstances of the convict and can be invaluable in bringing the past into life. These petitions are also found in The National Archives, in the Home Office and Privy Council series.
Records for those being transported from Ireland are to be found in the National Archives of Ireland. These include transportation registers and petitions similar to those described above. Both these sets of records have been transcribed and can be searched online on the National Archives of Ireland website, www.nationalarchives.ie. Unfortunately, the records are incomplete due to the destruction of many Irish records in 1922 and transportation registers for before 1836 have not survived to the present day. Nevertheless, the database does contain records for those convicts who had petitions made for them before 1836. The database provides the name of the convict along with trial and crime details and can be used free of charge.
Another useful website for researching those transported to Australia can be found at www.convictcentral.com. The site gives guidance on how to research convict ancestors, with transcriptions of records of some ships transporting convicts to various parts of Australia and full information on the musters taken in Australia during the early nineteenth century, whether they have been published and where the original records survive. It is a very useful website and can be accessed free of charge.
Another major way people emigrated was by being ‘assisted’, usually financially. A large number went to North America and the West Indies as indentured labourers. Such individuals were given financial assistance in travelling and living in the New World, agreed to work on a plantation for a number of years and were given a plot of land after they had completed their agreed period of work. This was a popular system, with 200,000–300,000 indentured labourers arriving in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A number of parishes would also sponsor such a system for their paupers as a means to relieve the burden of supporting the poor in the parish. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 allowed poor law unions to give financial and material assistance to those emigrating, and similar assistance was also provided by the Commission of Land Emigration (both mentioned above).
‘Parishes would help paupers migrate to relieve the burden of supporting them in the parish.’
Another type of emigration was by poor or orphaned children to various parts of the colonial Empire. The origins of this system can be traced to the seventeenth century. The first group of 100 children from the Christ’s Hospital School were sent by the City of London to assist the Virginia Company populate the new colony. The records for this school are now at the Guildhall Library and approximately 1,000 children were sent from this school between 1617 and 1775. Their names can be found in The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775.
Child migration was used increasingly during the mid-nineteenth century onwards, thanks to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1850 which allowed Boards of Guardians to send children abroad. Additionally, it was during this time that many charities, various church bodies and philanthropic organizations were established (such as Dr Barnardo’s), and many of these institutions opted to send pauper children abroad to help them establish a better life. The process continued well into the twentieth century; between 1922 and 1967 approximately 150,000 children migrated to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a small number to Rhodesia with the idea of populating the colonies with ‘good British white stock’. Details of how to trace these migrants will be discussed under the individual destination countries below.
This policy was often very unsettling for these children, displaced from their familiar home country and sent to live in faraway places, where they would often be treated as little more than cheap labour. Some child migrants are still living in their new countries and an organization dedicated to helping migrants trace their roots was established in 1987 – the Child Migrants Trust. Further details of the aims of the trust can be found at their website, www.childmigrantstrust.com.
Records for those leaving under indentured labour can be found at The National Archives and also at the London Guildhall Library. A good book detailing assisted migration to North America and the West Indies is Coldham’s The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775, mentioned above. General sources relating to the colonial governance of North America and the West Indies, found in The National Archives (State Office, Colonial Office and Privy Council calendars), will contain information of relevance. Local parish records may also have information amongst their vestry minutes about individuals granted assistance to emigrate. These should be held at the local archive or record office.
As mentioned, many individuals chose to leave on a voluntary basis, attempting to establish a better life in far and distant places. Relevant records for such migration can be found in various archives in the UK and also in many different repositories in destination countries. Below is a guide to the key sources that may be consulted for the most popular destination countries for such migrants.
Several states in the present-day United States and Canada made up one of the earliest colonies acquired for the British Empire. As such they were the earliest destination countries of both voluntary and involuntary migrants. Some general sources have been discussed earlier. The earliest colony to be inhabited was that of Virginia, where thousands of people were required to work on the plantations. Emigration was encouraged by using the ‘headright’ system, whereby people migrating would be given 50 acres of land if they funded their own arrival, and a further 50 acres if they paid for another migrant to arrive. This system enabled plantation owners to increase the size of their estates as most of the migrants would have had their travel paid for by the plantation owners. As such they would be indentured emigrants (see above). Nevertheless, below is a list of various records to assist in tracing free settlers during the colonial period.
• The calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, 1574–1738, relates to all matters of administration of the colonies. It is available on CD ROM at The National Archives and other large reference libraries. It is indexed by name, making it possible to search the collections for an individual migrant.
• Various publications also provide lists of emigrants to North America and are worth viewing:
C. Boyer has edited four books that include lists of migrants: Ships’ Passenger Lists: The South (1538–1825); National and New England (1600–1825); New York and New Jersey (1600–1825); Pennsylvania and Delaware (1641–1825).
P. W. Filby and M. K. Meyer (eds.), Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 13 volumes. A thorough list, including approximately 2.5 million names of migrants arriving in the United States and Canada from the sixteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.
J. C. Hotten, Original Lists of Persons Emigrating to America, 1600–1700.
David Dobson, Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America 1625–1825 was drawn from a number of original sources held at The National Archives.
• The National Archives holds a unique and detailed list of emigrants to North America between 1773 and 1776 in T47/9–12. The list provides names, ages, employment, residence and departure information for all those leaving.
One extremely useful online source for anyone tracing individuals who arrived in the United States through New York is the online database at www.ellisisland.org. The island was used as a major immigration station for all migrants arriving in the United States from 1892 to 1954, with over 20 million people arriving during that period. Most poor arrivals had to pass a physical examination in order to be allowed entry to the country at the island. The website has a searchable database for all those arriving between 1892 and 1924 which can be used free of charge.
Emigrants who left during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be traced using the passenger lists mentioned above. Additionally, many archives in the United States, such as the National Archives in Washington, contain information on their new settlers.
British colonization of Canada began at the same time as that of the rest of North America, although French settlers had been arriving in small numbers since the sixteenth century. After many conflicts between France and Britain over control of the territory, the French ceded the eastern part of Canada to the British in 1763 and thereafter it became the sole possession of Britain. The Hudson Bay Company was the main British organization involved in Canada, establishing small outposts since its inception in 1670.
Once Britain gained control of Canada, large numbers of emigrants arrived from the British Isles, particularly from Scotland and Ireland, and especially after America gained its independence in 1783. Such migration was actively encouraged by the Canadian authorities up until the twentieth century as a way of populating the vast land.
• The Hudson Bay Company’s records include journals of early settlers. Microfilm copies of these records can be found at The National Archives, in series BH 1. The original records can be found in Canada, as are the majority of records relating to immigration to the country.
• The National Archives of Canada has an online exhibition detailing the immigrant experience, titled ‘Moving Here, Staying Here: The Canadian Immigrant Experience’. It can be found at http:// www.collectionscanada.ca/immigrants/index-e.html and has an online database searchable by name for people arriving between 1925 and 1935. The website also includes a database of passenger lists from 1865 to 1922 that can be searched at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/passenger/001045–100.01-e.php. However, there is no name index of this database and it is only possible to search by the name of the ship.
• Another website which has a wealth of information concerning the Canadian immigration experience worth viewing is http://www.ist. uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.
Canada was also a major destination for child migrants from Britain, with approximately 100,000 such children arriving in Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their arrival may be traced in the Canadian sources mentioned above. Additionally, The National Archives also contains some records relating to this scheme, although they mainly concern general policy and do not contain specific lists of child migrants. They can be found in MH 102, covering the years 1910 to 1962.
Although convict settlement in Australia is infamous, the vast island was actually populated in greater numbers by free settlers. Many free settlers came due to economic factors and the hope of a better standard of life, and the numbers arriving swelled after the discovery of gold in the 1850s. Indeed migration to the country, including the celebrated ‘ten pound poms’ who were offered assisted passage by the Australian government, was very much encouraged well into the twentieth century, with the ‘White Australia Policy’ active from the 1890s to the late 1950s.
Along with the general passenger lists that record people leaving the UK and Ireland discussed above, there are other sources specific to Australia that may be of relevance. These can be found in the UK and in various Australian archives.
• The National Archives has a number of important records for newly arrived Australian migrants. The Colonial Office papers relating to the governance of New South Wales during the nineteenth century all contain names of emigrants. They can be found in series CO 201, CO 202, CO 360 and CO 369.
• The government took various censuses of convicts in New South Wales and Tasmania at various points from 1788 onwards. Although primarily concerned with recording convicts, they would also include those who were not transported. It is possible to find other genealogical data, such as age and occupation of these individuals, in these censuses, found in series HO 10.
• The Society of Genealogists also has a good number of records on new emigrants to Australia, including indexes to birth, marriages and deaths that occurred in the individual states.
• The National Archives of Australia has only a very limited amount of information on migration, as matters of immigration were not federal policy until 1901. Prior to that each of the six states would control immigration and their archives contain a variety of information on the new arrivals. It is best to contact the relevant state archive to discover the exact nature of the records held.
• The National Archives of Australia (www.naa.gov.au) does hold information for twentieth-century migration, including passenger lists form 1924 onwards, and some of their holdings can be searched online.
‘Australia was populated in greater numbers by free settlers than by convicts.’
Another important destination for those choosing to emigrate was New Zealand. Unlike Australia, New Zealand was never used as a penal colony, and those who arrived came by their own free will. The present-day government of New Zealand has placed a very good history of immigration to the country on the website http://www.teara.govt.nz/ NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/HistoryOfImmigration/en. This is a very good introduction for anyone interested in finding out the history of immigration to the country. The same economic push-and-pull factors of searching for a better life and the active encouragement of the New Zealand government lay behind this migration. The very first Britons arrived in 1790 but large-scale migration only occurred from 1840 onwards, after New Zealand was declared a crown colony.
A large number of emigrants would have first arrived in New South Wales and it may be possible to trace your ancestor using the same Australian sources as above. After 1839 the New Zealand Company began an active policy of recruiting migrants. The company was in existence until 1858 and its archives are now at The National Archives in series CO 208. The Society of Genealogists also contains microfilm of birth, marriage and death indexes of New Zealand, where civil registration became compulsory from 1848 onwards.
The National Archives of New Zealand (www.archives.govt.nz) also contains records of immigration to the country. These include lists of assisted passengers arriving up to 1890 and passenger arrival lists.
British and Irish migrants started to arrive in South Africa from 1806 onwards, when the Cape of Good Hope was officially ceded by Holland to Great Britain. Numbers arriving continued as further territories were obtained by the British from the Boers, culminating in the Union of South Africa in 1910. Other than the passenger lists in BT 27 (described above) there is only a very limited amount of information in the UK, found in The National Archives (payments made to Army and Navy pensioners settling there in the mid-nineteenth century held in the WO series, and correspondence files relating to settlers in the CO series), and also in some records at the Society of Genealogists. Although civil registration became compulsory for the entire country in 1923 (and earlier for some different provinces) the registers are not currently open to members of the public. It is best to contact the South African Society of Genealogists for further guidance if you are interested in tracing an emigrant ancestor in South Africa, at www.gensa.info.
The countries that received large numbers of British and Irish migrants have been discussed above. However, many other parts of the British Empire also had people settling in them, many of those individuals involved in the direct governance of the many colonies. One guide for records for those who settled abroad and retained links with the ‘homeland’ is the book, The British Overseas: A guide to records of their births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials, available in the United Kingdom (3rd edition, 1994) published by Guildhall Library.
One of these territories was the subcontinent of India. There had been a European presence in India since the sixteenth century and the East India Company, established by Royal Charter in 1600, eventually became the effective ruling body of India by the mid-eighteenth century. After the failed Indian Rebellion of 1857, India came under direct rule by the British Crown until the end of the colonial era in 1947. During this period many hundreds of thousands of individuals went to India, employed firstly by the East India Company and later in the employment of the India Office.
‘Migrants to other parts of the British Empire were often involved in the governance of the colonies.’
A large number of records were created relating to the governance of India, including personnel files of employees and parish records. The East India Company maintained a separate army, which later became the Indian Army, and records for these have been discussed in Chapter 9. Similarly, the births, marriages and deaths of those residing in India are detailed in Chapter 5. Additionally, the large archive of the East India Company at the British Library contains various documents for individual employees. These can be accessed by using the many indexes available for the various series of the collection, and there is also a card name index held in the Library. The British Library has also placed the card index as a searchable database online at http://india family.bl.uk/UI/. However, this index only contains a limited amount of biographical information and it is also worth visiting the Library in person as many people would not have been included in the card index.
Alistair McGowan was always curious about his origins, suspecting a European bloodline but uncertain exactly where it appeared in his family tree. He started by asking relatives about his background, knowing already that his father, George, was born and brought up in India. George’s birth certificate listed him as ‘Anglo-Indian’, which Alistair found out from research at the British Library’s Asia, Pacific and Africa reading room meant that one of the women in his family was Indian by birth. His quest was therefore to determine when his Anglo’ family emigrated, and which one married an ‘Indian’ girl.
Sources revealed that generations of McGowans were born in India, part of the colonial administration of the Raj and, prior to 1857, part of the civil service established by the East India Company that controlled British interest on the sub-continent. A key document was the baptism of Ralph McGowan, which revealed that his father was a magistrate called Suetonius; no mother’s name was listed on the document.
Alistair continued his research in India, and sought the advice of local historians who helped him work further back in time. He found a religious pamphlet that indicated Suetonius had married a noble-born Muslim lady, but because she refused to convert to Christianity her name was omitted from the baptism record that Alistair found in London.
Returning to the records at the British Library, Alistair was able to work even further back in time, and discovered that Suetonius’s father was also called Suetonius, and was baptized in Bengal in 1775. His parents were John McGowan and Mary de Cruz, and Alistair established from military records, including pension funds, army gazetteers and service papers, that John first arrived in India as a private with the East India Company’s army, and worked his way up to the rank of major – quite a rise. But the final surprise lay in the muster books for Fort St George, which indicated that John McGowan had sailed to India from Ireland – not Scotland as Alistair had always assumed. Was John McGowan born in Ireland? The records were inconclusive …
The Society of Genealogists also holds a selection of records for India. In addition, the ‘Families in British India Society’ is dedicated to British and Anglo-Indian families living in India and can provide assistance to anyone researching their ancestors. They have placed a number of their records online available to search by name. Further details about the society can be found on their website, www.fibis.org.
The Caribbean was another important colony in the British Empire, and emigration proved popular during the height of the plantation era in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As most emigrants settled prior to the late nineteenth century it is not possible to track these individuals using passenger lists in The National Archives series BT 27. Alternative sources have to be used, many of which are found in The National Archives.
Suggestions for further reading:
• Emigrants and Expats: A guide to sources on UK emigration and residents overseas, by Roger Kershaw (Public Records Office, 2002)
• Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600, by E. Richards (Hambledon, 2004)
The best starting point for detailed guidance is Tracing Your West Indian Ancestors by G. Grannum. The series E 157 has some registers of passengers travelling to Barbados during the seventeenth century. Further information about emigrants can be found in the calendar of State Papers Colonial mentioned above. The records of the governments of the various islands of the Caribbean may also contain relevant information, and these can be found in the CO series in The National Archives.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to detail migration records for every country that an individual may have migrated to. However, it is possible to find out further details about specific countries online by visiting the country pages found on www.cyndislist.com or www. worldgenweb.org. Both websites contain country-specific guidance. The Society of Genealogists also has collections for a number of different countries and details of their holdings can be found in their online catalogues at www.sog.org.uk.