Estimates vary as to how many men and women were shipped across the Atlantic; certainly somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 after 1717. The majority went to Maryland and Virginia. Numbers were sufficient that the trade became quite well organized. The government maintained a record of those granted pardons and those whose capital convictions were reduced. Other less readily accessible sources are the records of court proceedings and of ships leaving English ports.

A researcher unsure of the origins of an English immigrant ancestor before 1776 should begin with the indexes prepared by Peter W. Coldham. If you know the ancestor ran foul of the law, they are also the sensible place to begin. Printed book titles are listed here and all but the most recent are included on a Broderbund Family Archive CD (#350, Complete Book of Emigrants, 1999).

The Complete Book of Emigrants,
vol. 1 1607-60, vol. 2 1661-99, vol. 3 1700-50, vol. 4 1751-76. (Genealogical Publishing Co., 1987-93)
The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614-1775. (GPC, 1988)
Supplement to Emigrants in Bondage, (GPC, 1992)
More Emigrants in Bondage, 1614-1775, (GPC, 2002)

It is important that you read the introductions to these indexes. The author summarizes where the information comes from and urges everyone to locate the original court or other record. The volumes show a bias towards the records of courts in the south of England, notably London and what was known as the Home Circuit. By the time transportation began, courts known as Assizes were hearing the majority of criminal cases. Justices went round specified routes, or circuits, within particular geographic regions and presided over the trials. The Home Circuit included the counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. The other circuits were:
Norfolk, Midland, Northern, Western, and Great Sessions (Wales only).

Other records consulted by Coldham include the lists of those pardoned before 1718, court records from cities such as Liverpool and Bristol, Treasury papers that include convict lists, apprenticeship bindings and port books (records of the customs office in various places, e.g., Whitehaven, Southampton, Portsmouth, Exeter, Newcastle). There are many gaps in this last group, some of it deliberately destroyed, and some lost through fire. The London customs house, according to the Encyclopedia of London (W. Kent, 1951) burned in the Great Fire of 1666, in 1718, and again in 1814.

The documents are found in the Public Record Office or the various county record offices of England. Some court and customs material has been filmed. A close examination of Coldham's indexes, regardless of whether an entry is found, will inform you about the next stage of the search. A result will lead you to a record. No result will mean further investigation to determine whether relevant documents survive. In either situation, a search for records should involve four stages.

1. Read the leaflets issued by the PRO on assize court records, port books and transportation. The URL for the leaflets index page is
www.pro.gov.uk/leaflets/Riindex.asp

2. Look in the Family History Library Catalog (the CD-ROM version is recommended) using the keyword and place searches and checking at the national, county and town level under emigration and court records. Useful keywords are 'assizes' combined with a county name, 'emigration', 'port' combined with a name (e.g., Liverpool).

3. For the courts of quarter sessions in each county there are summaries of records in Quarter Sessions Records for Family Historians (J.S.W. Gibson, Federation of Family History Societies, 4th ed., 1995); in addition the Access to Archives website contains an ever-growing number of catalogs of quarter sessions collections in English record offices (see the summer issue of Genealogical Computing for more information and visit the site at www.a2a.pro.gov.uk/ ).

4. Check for on-line catalogs at the websites of relevant county record offices. Web addresses can be found through the UK gateway site (www.genuki.org ).

Collecting information from documents once they are identified will present challenges. Some of the material before 1733 was in Latin, the writing will be difficult to understand and the results may not be helpful. The fortunate among you will find published transcripts of court proceedings. If the above steps fail to turn up published material another option is to check Texts and Calendars I and II (Mullins, E.C., 1958, 1983) and subsequent updates to the publications of record societies. These are now listed by the National Register of Archives accessed through the Historical Manuscripts Commission (www.hmc.gov.uk ).

Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) has been researching her British ancestry for thirty years. She is an instructor and study tour leader for Samford University's IGHR, and teaches for the online family history program of Vermont College. Sherry is President of the Association of Professional Genealogists. She is the author of:

Your Scottish Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans

Your English Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans