Emigration everywhere - AJCP

Emigration records in the AJCP

Emigration records are found across many government departments, County Record Offices and in  private collections. The records of the Emigration Departments of the Colonial Office contain a wealth of material about emigration schemes, expenses, as well as many personal letters from those seeking financial assistance to emigrate.

Use the search box on the AJCP portal page to start a search

Experiment with a variety of search terms, each yields a different set of results. Use quotation marks to keep terms together as a phrase

• emigration departments
• "registers of emigrants"
• emigrants
• emigration registers
• "emigration registers"
• emigration AND "South Australia"
• "emigrant letters"

The resulting search terms then appear in Trove in this format 

emigration registers AND nuc:"ANL:AJCP"

The AND is the Boolean operator, nuc (National Union Catalogue) "ANL:AJCP" indicates that the search is being conducted within the Australian National Library's AJCP collection. 

All of this collection is housed in the Diaries, Letters and Archives section of Trove. Only three records will be displayed from the original search so one needs to scroll down and select the green link See all diaries, letters and archives results.

From a "register of emigrants" search, a variety of dates, sources and details are displayed in the blue links.

To view an item, click on the blue link then scroll down and choose Get

Then choose View at Australian Joint Copying Project which brings one to the screen shown below.

The Browse Collection then displays the images or sets of images. In this case there are only 4.

Choose an individual image to view, enlarge to full screen and/or use the scroll button on your mouse or trackpad.

Emigration records are plentiful and found across a wide variety of films within the AJCP. There are hand written letters applying for free passage along with replies which deny or grant the passage. Your ancestor may not have emigrated but may have applied to do so and included the details of their circumstances to support their application.

It is not often that one can find an individual's name in emigration records by searching for the surname, but if you have some indication of the date of emigration you may have success in locating their records. 

In the next post I will address the vital role of the Finding Aids/Guides in enhancing searches.

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Previous posts in this series

A - About the AJCP | B -Browsing the Board of Trade | C - County Record Offices | D - Downloading Documents

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

Downloading Documents - AJCP

Decisions concerning downloads

So far in this series of posts we have just browsed for items of interest. Once found there are choices to be made when saving to one's own collection.

Here is the Probate of a will found in the Doncaster Archive. To see the extent of the file one would choose the green Browse this collection button. There are 6 pages displayed, not just the 2p. listed.

Browse, Cite and Download

Choices for downloading are PDF or JPG

For a multi-page document, check the box next to Select A Range Of Images To Download

Download options

There is no charge for downloading records. 

Keeping track of records

Each page/record/image has an individual URL. The breadcrumb trail shows exactly where one is within the collection.

The next post will examine the options for and limitations of searching for records rather than browsing.

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Previous posts in this series

A - About the AJCP | B -Browsing the Board of Trade | C - County Record Offices

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

County Record Offices and Archives - AJCP

Browsing County records in the M Series of the AJCP

Access to original historical records forms the basis of research for historians and genealogists. Through the AJCP we can visit some of the records of the various counties across the UK, free and from the comfort of our homes. 

Be sure to look for your County of interest in the M series Read the Guide for the County then browse the records to discover the gems within.

Here are some of the Counties that have records digitised in the AJCP and start with the letter C.

Cambridgeshire Record Office - Cambridge, Huntingdon

Cheshire Record Office

Cleveland County Archives

Cornwall County Record Office

Cumbria Record Office

Cornwall

The description of the records filmed at the Cornwall County Record Office include:

"journals of voyages from Melbourne to America, Plymouth to Melbourne and Adelaide to Gravesend; correspondence and legal documents of families including the Victor Family, the Adams Family, the Carlyon Family; emigration lists; mining records; memoirs of Hannah Glasson and papers relating to the Bonython Family."

Some examples 

From the Diary of Capt. John T Short of St Ives comes this excerpt from a list of people who left the Parish of St Ives and emigrated to Australia in 1854. 

View the complete list at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1042988855/view

The 35 page Memoirs of Mrs Hannah Glasson contains a wealth of material for the family historian not just for her descendants but also a picture of life in colonial America across a wide variety of American counties. 

It details a trip back to her parents' native Cornwall when she was 14 in 1859, then their voyage on the "Donald McKay" to Sydney. She wrote about her life in NSW, her subsequent marriage and life in New Zealand and NSW.

View the whole memoir at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1043011450/view

How lucky are you if your ancestor was Richard Perry of Crowan? His journals kept on the steamship Northumberland  from Plymouth to Melbourne and Adelaide in 1873, and on the Lady Jocelyn from Adelaide to Gravesend  in 1876, are written in a beautifully clear hand and expressed in rhyming verse. Many pages include his signature, a precious find for the family historian.

Excerpt from https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1043016789/view

All of the above are from just one County - Cornwall

A miscellany of examples of records in other Counties

• Cumbria Archive - Scrapbook of photographs and press cuttings
• Cleveland County Archive - 1958 Letter of Hungarian refugee Elizabeth Kevi
• Cheshire Record Office - The costs of travelling around the world in 1889
• Cambridgeshire Record Office - List of emigrants to Victoria from Cambridgeshire 1840 -1870

Browse the M Series list for the wide variety of County and Archive Records, a rich source of material to add background and context to our family stories. 

Have you considered writing your life story and contributing it to a local archive for your future descendants?

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Previous posts in this series

A - About the AJCP | B -Browsing the Board of Trade

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info