Ancestors Abroad

It wasn't only convicts who went to Australia during the 19th century. Plenty of free people chose to make a new life there and immigration continued at a fairly unchecked pace well into the 20th ...

Apart from the state and government records, there are other routes that can be helpful in tracing your ancestors in Australia. Where state records haven't been a great deal of help, which can be the ...

The Aborigines are the indigenous people of Australia, with a history that dates back for millenniums. However you might consider their treatment at the hands of Europeans, the fact is that there ...

It's galling for genealogists that Australian government policy is to destroy all name-related census material (it's done for privacy reasons); all the returns after 1901 have gone. Since ...

Australia is a country with military records that go back to its foundation as a penal colony, as soldiers arrived as part of the First Fleet to police the convicts and Australian servicemen have ...

The way the first Britons found their way to Australia was as convicts, when the country was a penal colony from 1788-1868. After that, and until just a few decades ago, others went as free ...

From the start of Australia's time as a colony in 1788, each state has been responsible for its own records - the central government has never been involved. So whether you're researching births, ...

For a genealogist, a will can be a treasure trove. It contains information about family, relationships, the way a person lived, and, obviously, what they owned. Wills help paint the larger picture of ...

Canada and Britain have had long and deep ties since the French were forced out of the country and it became a British possession. For thousands, emigration to Canada offered the possibility of a new ...

Many people in Britain have their ancestral roots in Europe, and any attempt to trace the family tree means looking across the Channel to the Continent. Be warned, though, the biggest problem you'll ...

Genealogists have to be thankful to the Church of Latter Day Saints or the Mormons as they're usually known. They created the ...

A person's vital records show the landmark events in life - birth, marriage and death. Whether you're searching for ancestors in Ireland or Northern Ireland, there's a wealth of records available. ...

Wills are a vital source of information for genealogists. They take on a greater resonance in Ireland, where there's really no 19th century census material available to study. A will gives you a ...

As anyone researching family history soon learns, census records can be like gold. Not only do you locate a person in time, but also in a very physical place, with a street address. Additionally, you ...

It might not really be the case, but it often seems that no race is as well travelled as the Irish. Almost everywhere in the world you'll find people with Irish roots, whose ancestors left their home ...

With census records so sparse in Ireland you need other ways to trace your ancestry, and land records can help. Again, they’re not widespread, and often with not a great deal of value. But they’re ...

Genealogists should be glad that European births have been registered in New Zealand since 1848, not too many years after its original white settlement, since this means that the vast majority of ...

As with births, New Zealand began the registration of European deaths in 1848, the collected records being kept by the Registrar General (as with other vital records, the registration of Maori deaths ...

New Zealand held its first parliamentary elections in 1853, and the first New Zealand Parliament met in 1856.At the time, the right to vote was defined according to sex, age, nationality and the ...

The native people of New Zealand possibly suffered less in their relations with Europeans than many indigenous civilisations. But that didn't mean the interactions between Europeans and Maoris ...

In New Zealand, the registration of marriage first became compulsory in 1854 and you can find records from that time onwards in the Registrar General's Index of Marriages (for Maoris, registration ...

The first instance of a New Zealand conflict came early in the 19th century land wars, where colonists subdued the Maori. Since then New Zealand troops have been involved in many conflagrations, ...

For most of the time since it was settled, immigrants to New Zealand have arrived by ship; there was simply no other way to reach the country. Generally, those vessels came directly from Europe, ...

As the saying goes the poor have always been with us, and Scotland has been no exception. If your ancestors from there weren’t among the rich, there’s a possibility they might have been affected by ...

After 1855 it’s easy to find records of Scottish births since, like England and Wales, they were registered. You can search online for births more than a hundred years ago at www.scotlandspeople.gov.u...

Just like birth and marriage records there’s a divide in the history of recording deaths in Scotland, and it comes in 1855, when compulsory registration of deaths came into effect. Before that it was ...

Researching marriages in Scotland is very similar to tracing those in England or Wales. But it’s a game of two halves. After 1855 with compulsory registration, tracing marriages is quite easy, with ...

America is a land of immigrants. According to historians, even the Native Americans first arrived over the land bridge that originally connected Siberia and Alaska. African-Americans arrived on the ...

Land records can be a wonderful resource for anyone researching family history. They can give plenty of information about who bought or sold the land, including when it happened, for how much, and ...

U.S. Native American Records Researching Native American records presents its own, unique challenges. Given that there are a limited amount of records, the chances are that you won't be able to ...

Unlike European countries, the United States doesn't have a central national depository of vital records - birth, marriage and death certificates. For these you have to search by state and often at a ...

Census records are a wonderful means to discover information about your ancestors. Not only can you see where they lived, but you can also obtain a snapshot of sorts about the way they lived, the ...

Reading an ancestor’s will can tell you a lot about how they managed to live their lives. It’s not simply the goods and property they acquired – be that great or small – but how they wanted all of ...

For several centuries, Africans came to the United States as slaves, not free men and women. They were regarded as possessions rather than as people, and treated that way. That fact makes it almost ...

The military tradition in the United States dates from its very foundation, when the Revolutionary Army fought and beat the British. From that point the country's armed forces have regularly been ...

Emigration was commonplace in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands from Britain and Ireland answered the challenge of seeking a better life overseas, and many of them went to the United ...