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Ancestry Daily News
7/31/2001 - Archive
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Emigrants from Britian in the 1800s |
Emigrants from Britian in the 1800s
I have been asked several times about records of those leaving Britain in more
recent times. Many of the published lists concentrate on the earlier, pre-1775
period. Finding accessible lists and resources for the later years is more difficult.
Nineteenth century emigration records for Britain, by which I mean England,
Scotland, and Wales, are neither extensive nor centrally located. Despite these
drawbacks, some of you may want to search for a record of the departure of your
ancestor.
Begin by considering the resources at the Public Record Office (PRO), the repository
of national records at Kew, west of London (www.pro.gov.uk/).
Unfortunately, it is only in relatively modern times that records of departure
begin. Outward Passenger Lists 1890 to 1960, found in class BT 27 (where BT
means Board of Trade), contain lists of passengers sailing to places outside
of Europe. The records are arranged by year and port, and are not indexed. If
you find an entry, it will include the name, age, occupation, and home address.
Passports start much earlier but were not required for everyone traveling overseas
until the First World War in 1914.
Passports were first issued in the 1500s, but applicants were for the most part
diplomats and merchants. The major group of registers of passports is in class
FO (Foreign Office) 610. The outside dates are 1795 to 1948; indexes exist for
1851 to 1862 and 1874 to 1916.
Another potentially useful resource is reports to the government known as Parliamentary
Papers. From time to time Parliament took a great interest in out-migration
and ordered studies into the reasons people went, or into the condition of those
who were now resettled somewhere in the Empire. There are not many of these
volumes in the Family History Library, but they are in many good research libraries
around North America and in major libraries in the UK. A guide for this period
is the Select List of British Parliamentary Papers 1833-1899 (Ford, P.
and G., Irish University Press, 1969).
The government encouraged people to emigrate, offering the enticement of free
passage and land grants. There are a variety of records, letters, correspondence
and registers. The classes are CO (Colonial Office) 385, Entry Books 1815 to
1833, and 386, Land and Emigration Commission Papers 1840 to 1876. These are
concerned mainly with people going to Canada. However, many of those who selected
Canada as their destination went subsequently to the United States.
What about records of emigration gathered at the local level? The Poor Law (Amendment)
Act of 1834 made provision for the Boards of Guardians of the poor law unions
to provide financial assistance to individuals and families to emigrate. This
support continued to 1890. The boards were required to report who had received
assistance, occupation, and destination. The records are now together in Class
MH (Ministry of Health) 12 at the PRO, arranged alphabetically within the county
and poor law union. Poor law unions were the basis of organization for civil
registration and census taking. Lists matching parishes with unions can be found
on the Web through GENUKI (www.genuki.org.uk).
Those who know exactly where their ancestors were living before emigration have
additional options. Examine the poor records of the parish. Parishes were raising
funds to help local individuals and families make a new start, before and after
changes in administration of poor relief. The minutes of meetings of the parish
administrative committee (kirk sessions in Scotland and the vestry elsewhere)
and parish accounts are a likely place for information. Some parish administrative
records can be found in the Family History Library but most are in regional
record offices in Britain.
If you are researching the area around Glasgow in Scotland then the index to
those making application to receive poor relief in the city, as well as Barony
and Govan may apply. The start date is 1851 and the index is complete through
1900. This can be found at the Glasgow City Archives in the Mitchell Library.
A similar index has been completed for the county of Lanark and Dumbarton is
in progress.
For further information on the records at the PRO visit their Web site at www.pro.gov.uk,
select 'Start Your Search' and then click on 'Leaflets Index' in the dark green
bar towards the top. You need to select 'E' to find descriptions of records
relating to emigration. I suggest you also check out this topic with the Research
Helps of the LDS Web-site. Choose
'E' for England, and then the England Research Outline, where you will find
the topic 'Emigration and Immigration.' You can, by the way, find this topic
within other research outlines, for example, Scotland, New York, Pennsylvania—all
found the same way.
For an interesting presentation on the transatlantic journey try the National
Maritime Museum at Greenwich where you click on 'Passengers' to enter a
section with several options about sea travel.
Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) has been researching her British ancestry
for thirty years. She founded Interlink
Bookshop and Genealogical Services in 1988; she currently lectures in Canada
and the United States and is vice president of the Association of Professional
Genealogists. You can e-mail Sherry with suggestions for future British genealogy
articles at sherryirvine55@myfamily.com.
She will not be able to send personal replies, but will feature some questions
in upcoming issues of the Ancestry Daily News. Sherry also regrets that
she is unable to assist with personal research.
Sherry is also the author of: Your
Scottish Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
and Your English
Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
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