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Assisted Immigration to Australia: Queensland Passenger Lists
Drawing of migrants disembarking from a ship, ca 1885. From Cassell’s Picturesque Australia vol. 3, edited by E. E. Morris : Melbourne : Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1888, opp. p. 222. Wikimedia Commons image.
Did you know that the British government has not only encouraged many people to leave Britain, it has helped them do it? This is known as “assisted immigration.” It has affected millions of our relatives’ lives, both of original migrants and their descendants.
Australia received a LOT of new residents through assisted immigration from the 1830s clear through the late 1900s. Fortunately, passenger lists kept on these folks can help you find your relatives who participated. Some of these lists have come online, including for arrivals in Queensland.
Now you can search Queensland passenger lists for assisted immigrants (1848-1912, with over a quarter million records) in two ways:
- FindMyPast subscribers can access indexed transcripts here.
- Anyone can search this index for FREE at the Queensland State Archive. It’s less user-friendly than FindMyPast (but it’s free). From that site, you can download a digital image of each passenger list for free, or pay to order a print copy.
Learn more about immigration to Australia at FamilySearch. You’ll find a fun published family history about an early Australian immigrant family on our Genealogy Gems Book Club page: The Worst Country in the World: The True Story of an Australian Pioneer Family.
Here’s a Google tip for finding datasets. Often you’ll hear about NEW datasets available on major genealogy websites, as I did from FindMyPast for the above collection. But sometimes that same data (perhaps in a slightly different format) is already available for free on another site. The big genealogy websites procure data from lots of other sources that may already host it online. Yes, it’s convenient to search all these databases in one central site like FindMyPast. But don’t subscribe to a site for the sake of ONE collection without Googling the name of the dataset first. That’s what I did in this case, and I found it online at the Queensland State Archive.
How to Make Google Cache Pay Off in Your Genealogy Research
What do you do when you Google something, click on a search result URL, and it says “page not found,” or “error?” Debbie recently discovered the answer in her new copy of the newly revised and updated The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox (2nd edition).
She wrote to us: “I ordered my book last week and found it in my mailbox today! I immediately flipped through it, reading the headings and looking at the pictures. I love the way it reads…not “text-booky” but more enjoyable and more as if someone were just talking to me. I can’t wait to try out all the tips and see what I can discover! In fact, I already discovered something I didn’t know…seeking out the cache when you get a page that says “not found” or “error”. Now, if only I can remember all the times I saw that. Thank you so much! I’m very happy that I added this book to my little genealogy library!”
Google Cache: Here’s How It Works
As you know, Google “crawls” the web constantly indexing websites. It also takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches, or stores, the image as a backup. It’s the behind-the-scenes information that Google uses to judge if a page is a good match for your search queries.
In the case of a website that no longer exists, the cache copy provides a snapshot of the website when it was still active. Practically every search result includes a Cached link.
How to Retrieve a Cached Webpage:
When you land on a “File Note Found” error page, click the Back button on your browser to return to the Google search results page.- Directly under the website title is the URL. Click the small down arrow right next to that address.
- “Cached” will be one of the options presented in the pop up menu. Clicking on the Cached link will take you to the Google cached version of that webpage, instead of the current version of the page.
Cached versions of websites can also be useful if the original webpage is unavailable because:
- of internet congestion;
- the website is down, overloaded, or just slow. Since Google’s servers are typically faster than many web servers, you can often access a page’s cached version faster than the page itself; and
- the website owner recently removed the page from the web.
If Google returns a link to a page that appears to have little to do with your query, or if you can’t find the information you are seeking on the current version of the page, take a look at the cached version by clicking the cached link. You will then see the webpage as it looked when Google last indexed it.
You’ll notice that a gray header will appear at the top of the page. This provides you will the following information about the cached page you are viewing:
- The original web address of the page.
- The date and time that the page you are viewing was cached.
- A link to the current version of that page.
If you don’t see a cached link in a search result, it may have been omitted because the website owner has requested that Google remove the cached version, or requested that Google not cache their content. Also, any sites Google has not yet indexed won’t have a cached version.
Be aware that if the original page contains more than 101 kilobytes of text, the cached version of the page will consist only of the first 101 kbytes (120 kbytes for pdf files).
Interested in learning more about caching?
VIDEO: HTTP Caching
This tip comes straight from my book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition, all-new and revised for 2015. Find more great tips like this for getting the most out of Google for genealogy–and anything else you want to find online! Click on the link to learn more.
We Dig These Gems: New Genealogy Records Online
We learn about so many fantastic new genealogy records online every week. So each Friday we round up several of them for you to glance through. Watch for databases and documents that your ancestors might appear in–but also watch for the kinds of records that may be out there already, that you haven’t yet looked for. This week: British women in World War I, Polish-American marriages, Irish vital records, Canadian travel photography, Scottish artifacts and documents and a Louisiana (US) press archive.
WWI WOMEN. FindMyPast has posted over 9,500 UK records that illustrate the various roles played by woman during the Frist World War. These include:
- Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Service Records 1917-1920. It’s a relatively small collection but rich in material on each woman.
- British Women’s Royal Naval Service officer files 1917-1919 (ADM 318) details the service history of women who served as officers in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the First World War.
- British Women’s Royal Naval Service Ratings’ Service Registers 1918-1919 contains the details of nearly 7,000 enlisted women who served as Wrens during the First World War.
- British Women’s Royal Air Force Service Records 1918-1920 is an index of 31,090 Women’s Royal Air Force service records held by The National Archives.
POLISH-AMERICAN MARRIAGES. A new database of Polish-American marriages has been posted by the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast.
According to a press release, “This database contains the names of couples of Polish origin who were married in select locations in the Northeast United States. The information was taken from marriage records, newspaper marriage announcements, town reports, parish histories or information submitted by Society members. The time period generally covered by these lists is 1892-1940. It includes the States of Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. Connecticut and Jersey City, NJ will be added at a later date.”
IRISH BMD. Over a million records appear in a new database of Irish records of the city and county of Derry~Londonderry and Inishowen, County Donegal. Entries span 1642-1922 and include:
- Pre-1922 civil birth and marriage registers,
- Early baptismal and marriage registers of 97 churches,
- Headstone inscriptions from 118 graveyards, and
- Census returns and census substitutes from 1663 to 1901.
Click here to access these records (and other County Derry resources) at RootsIreland,ie (subscription required).
CANADIAN TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY. A small but visually rich collection of pictures promoting Canadian tourism is now at Flickr Creative Commons. Use these to explore places your ancestors may have visited (and the images that may have lured them there) if they vacationed by rail in the 1800s or early 1900s. (Click here to learn more about finding great historical photos at Flickr Creative Commons.)
SCOTTISH ARTIFACTS AND DOCUMENTS. A new digital archive at Historic Scotland has launched an online database of 400 artefacts now includes over 400 artifacts important to Scottish history. Everyday household objects, ship models, coins, weaponry, bits ‘n bobs of old homes and buildings, industrial machinery and miscellaneous photos, books and ephemera are all browsable on this site. It’s a great place to look for images that help illustrate your Scottish ancestors’ history.
LOUISIANA PRESS COVERAGE. The Louisiana Digital Media Archive has launched as “the first project in the nation to combine the media collections of a public broadcaster and a state archives,” according to its site description. “This ever-expanding site contains a combined catalog of thousands of hours of media recorded over the past half-century. You can see interviews with Louisiana civil rights pioneers, notable political figures, war heroes, artists and literary icons. You’ll have a front row seat to Louisiana history through video of historic events. You can also visit remote and endangered Louisiana places and cultures.”
Not sure how to find record sets like these for YOUR family history? Here’s a tip! Set up a Google Alert. Say you want to know whenever new material on Polish-Americans in Detroit is found by Google’s ever-searching search engines. Click here to learn how to set up this search (or any other) Google Alert for genealogy.
This tip comes to you courtesy of the book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Second Edition by Lisa Louise Cooke–the fully-revised 2015 edition that’s packed with strategies that will dramatically improve your ability to find your family history online.
