Family History - Australian Related Links
| Other Links: | New Zealand | United Kingdom | Irish | Australian Church Registers |
| Online Society Journals |
| 1. | Society of Australian Genealogists |
| The premier family history society in Australia. Founded over 60 years ago, it currently occupies a unique heritage building in the heart of Sydney. | |
| 2. | Port Macquarie and Districts Family History Society, Inc |
| This society is one of many family history groups along the mid north coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is very active and recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The society has a significant library of family history related information available in conjunction with local studies material at the Port Macquarie Library. Well worth joining if you live in the area or pay them a visit if you are in the area. | |
| 3. | Family Search Website |
| This is the internet family history data repository run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, where you can search the Ancestral File, International Genealogical Index, Pedigree Resource File, and web sites. It is also worth while checking out their new website currently under testing at Family Search Labs. It offers you the chance to try out their new family history technology which has thousands of indexed records linked to digital images. Whilst the current site mainly has material of American interest, it will expand in the future to cover a world wide range of records. | |
| 4. | Ancestry.Com |
| An online resource for tracing family history, providing one simple search of million's of names contained in a comprehensive and diverse collection of online genealogical databases. | |
| 5. | Roots Web WorldConnect Project |
| The Internet's oldest and largest FREE genealogy site with over 480 million names on file in RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project. This site also has a large number of mailing lists where you may post messages seeking information about persons in a specific geographic location. For example, if you have family from the North Coast of New South Wales, you would subscribe to NORCO and post the message there so that others will receive your enquiry or find it at a future time. | |
| 6. | Genealogy Search Australia |
| Genealogy Search Australia is a free, non commercial site for the amateur or professional genealogist. | |
| 7. | New South Wales Births, Deaths and Marriages |
| Search the indexes to births (1787-1910), marriages (1788-1960) and deaths (1788-1980) for New South Wales for free. | |
| 8. | Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages |
| Search the indexes to births (1853-1909), marriages (1853-1942) and deaths (1853-1985) for Victoria, or the church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria 1836 to 1853. Searching is free, but you must pay to see the search results currently 99¢ per page. | |
| 9. | Victorian Wills |
| Index to Wills, Probate and Administration Records 1841-1925. This is a database where you can search for names of people who underwent the probate process in Victoria. If you find an entry, you can look at the actual will and associated documents all for free.. | |
| 10. | Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages |
| Search the indexes to births (1829 to 1914), marriages (1829 to 1934) and deaths (1829-1964) for Queensland without charge. Please note this site has recently been upgraded and marriage and death indexes extended. Also, the search interface has been improved however, it is now mandatory to enter a start date which must be in full, e.g. "01/10/1904". Because the underlying search data has the actual date available (even though you will never see it), it is possible to determine the actual date of an event by doing progressive searches using a process called 'binary chop'. Click here for a detailed explanation of how to determine the event dates. | |
| 11. | South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society Inc - SA DEATHS & BURIALS |
| This is a searchable database of the society's records covering the cemetery index (1836-2004), SA Government Gazettes (1845-2000) and newspaper deaths (1996-July 2003). The newspaper deaths includes Death, Funeral, In Memoriam and Lest We Forget notices. | |
| 12. | Western Australia Index of Birth, Deaths and Marriages 1841-1905 |
| Search the indexes to births (1841-1932), marriages (1841-1936) and deaths (1841-1965) for Western Australia for free. To search, click the drop down combo box after "Select the information you would like to search for" and choose either 'births', 'marriages' or 'deaths'. | |
| 13. | Convict Transportation Registers |
| This web page is located on the State Library of Queensland website and has a searchable database of over 123,000 of the estimated 160,000 convicts transported to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is taken from the 1787-1867 British Convict transportation registers compiled from the British Home Office (HO) records which are available on microfilm. The located records contain names, term of years, transport ships, etc but you are not able to view the actual microfilm images. | |
| 14. | State Records of New South Wales |
| State Records is the New South Wales Government's archives and records management authority. Their web site is the portal to the documentary history of the state and they have dozens of on-line indexes from convicts, land, immigration, divorce, deceased estates, etc. They are now trialling a new feature which provides access to scanned microfilm images - at present these are from NRS 5316, NRS 5318 and NRS 5320 - Persons on Bounty Ships. | |
| 15. | National Archives of Australia |
| The National Archives promotes good government record keeping and encourages community awareness and use of valuable Commonwealth records in its care. This is a great site for ordering WW1 and WW2 service records. | |
| 16. | Ryerson Index of Deaths in Australia |
| The Ryerson Index is an index to death notices appearing in current Australian newspapers and currently has nearly 2 million entries from over 140 newspapers. It also includes some funeral notices, probate notices and obituaries. To support this strictly volunteer organization, please access this site by going directly to www.ryersonindex.org and not using Google or any other search engine. | |
| 17. | Cemetery Records |
| There are many people and organizations putting their cemetery records on the internet from where they may be searched. The following list mainly refers to internet sites with search facilities that I have found useful in my research. There are many others. | |
| 18. | Australian ANZAC's in the Great War 1914-1918 |
| This database that draws on a wide range of sources to provide details on the 330,000 men and women who served overseas in the (First) Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1918. | |
| 19. | World War Two Nominal Roll |
| The World War Two Nominal Roll was created to honour and commemorate the men and women who served in Australia's defence forces and the Merchant Navy during this conflict. | |
| 20. | Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters |
| Masters, crew, a stowaway or two; passengers, cabin, saloon and steerage; births at sea, deaths at sea; deserters; vessels with one crew and one passenger and those with 70 crew and hundreds of passengers; simple single sail boats, barques, brigs, large steam ships; whaling voyages, regular coastal passenger trips, voyages from other Australian ports, London, San Francisco, China and other exotic ports - you will find them all here. It currently (January 2004) covers 1870 to 1874, about 50% of 1875 and 1876, all of 1877 and 1878 (except July 1878), and January 1879 only. I know other periods are currently being indexed. | |
| 21. | Passenger Leaving Victoria 1852-1908 |
| This database is a searchable list of passengers travelling on ships leaving Victoria for interstate, United Kingdom, New Zealand and foreign ports between 1852 and 1908.A search can be made by passenger names, ship name or departure date to obtain a reference to the microfilm copy of the lists available only in the Public Records Office of Victoria reading rooms. Further installments to 1923 are planned. | |
| 22. | Searchable Digital Copies of Australian Newspapers on the Internet |
| This is the National Library
of Australia (NLA) web site which allows searchable internet access to
many Australian newspapers published from 1803
through to 1954. The site originated from a plan in 2007 by the NLA in collaboration with each Australian
State and Territory library, to digitise out of copyright
Australian newspapers. As of 27 August 2010 there were 2,256,557
pages consisting of 24,474,888 articles available to search including the very important Sydney Gazette
(1803-1842) and Sydney Morning Herald (1831-1889).
Click here to view the newspapers and date ranges digitised - and scroll down to 'Coverage'. |
|
| 23. | Other Digital Copies of Newspapers on the Internet, 1840-45 |
| The Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project aims to ensure access to and preservation of selected periodical titles that began publication between 1840-1845 through a process of preservation microfilming and digitisation. Currently there are over 60 titles including the Geelong Advertiser. North Geelong, 1840-1845., The Hunter River Gazette and Journal of Agriculture, Commerce, Politics, and News. West Maitland, N.S.W., 1841-1842 and The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser. Maitland, N.S.W.; 1843-1855. | |
| 24. | Government Gazettes - Victoria, New South Wales and Port Phillip |
| This site has a searchable on-line archive of historical government gazettes for New South Wales (1836-1851), Port Phillip (1843-1851) and Victoria (1851-1997). Government Gazettes publicise the official notifications of government decisions and legal actions and are valuable sources. | |
| 25. | Current Australian Death Notices, Funeral Notices and Obituaries (from 2005) |
| This site was created in 2005 to allow anyone with internet access to be able to perform a free search for the death notice, funeral notice or obituary of a recently deceased person. The notices remain in the main search area for 28 days after the death of a person, then they are moved to the archive section where they can be searched. | |
| 26. | In Their Honour (Burial sites of Australian War Dead) |
| This site is dedicated to Australian men and women who served in the Armed Forces from 1914 to 1949. Many of them sacrificed their lives for "King and country". Thousands did not come home to their families and were buried in War Graves in cemeteries across Europe and the Middle East. In Their Honour shows the burial or memorial location of all service men and women who fought for our freedom and paid the ultimate price. | |
| 27. | Index to Convict Records |
| This site allows
convicts from Britain to be located by a simple search. The index has
been compiled by the State Library of Queensland from HO 11 Criminal –
Convict Transportation Registers series which are available on microfilm
as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP). The records
mainly include those convicted in England, Wales and Scotland. Only
a small number of Irish convicts appear in this series of the Home
Office records. The database also includes soldiers who had been
court-martialled and sentenced to transportation. These 'soldier
convicts' may have been convicted in various British colonies including
the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Canada. Over 123,000 out of the
estimated 160,000 convicts transported to Australia are recorded in this
database and cover the period of 1787 to 1867. Please note this series is
not an exhaustive list of all convicts sent to Australia. |
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Last Updated 18 December 2011
Copyright (c) Rex and Yvonne Toomey 2011