Emigration

North America, General.

Localities in North America.

Scotch-Irish in North America

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND.
Published Works on Emigration
Australian Sources to Identify Irish Place of Origin


France.

South Africa, Argentina & West Indies.

Passenger & emigrant lists.

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Australia

For Australia and New Zealand, the situation relating to records is quite good. Because of the distance, very few emigrants could afford the journey themselves, and most, whether assisted free settlers or transported convicts, are therefore quite well documented.

Transportation from Ireland for crimes committed in Ireland, lasted from 1791 to 1853, ending some fifteen years earlier than transportation from England. The only mass transportation later than 1853 was of 63 Fenians who were sent to Western Australia in 1868, aboard the last convict ship from England to Australia.

The records of the Chief Secretary's Office, which had responsibility for the penal system, are the major Irish source of information on transportees. Not all of the relevant records have survived, particularly for the period before 1836, but what does exist can provide a wealth of information.

The records were formerly housed in the State Paper Office in Dublin Castle, which is now part of the National Archives and is situated at Bishop St, Dublin 8. The principal classes of relevant records are as follows:
  1. Prisoners' Petitions and Cases, 1788-1836 . These consist of petitions to the Lord Lieutenant for commutation or remission of sentence, and record the crime, trial, sentence, place of origin and family circumstances.
  2. State Prisoners' Petitions. These specifically concern those arrested for participation in the 1798 rebellion, and record the same information as the main series of petitions.
  3. Convict Reference Files, from 1836. These continue the earlier petitions series, and may include a wide range of additional material.
  4. Transportation Registers, from 1836. These record all the names of those sentenced to death or transportation, giving the name, age, date and county of trial, crime and sentence. Other details, including the name of the transport ship or the place of detention are sometimes also given.
  5. Male Convict Register 1842-47 . In addition to the information supplied by the Transportaion Registers, this volume also gives physical descriptions.
  6. Register of Convicts on Convict Ships, 1851-53 . This gives the names, dates and counties of trial of those tranported to Van Dieman's Land and Western Australia for the period covered.
  7. Free Settlers' Papers, 1828-52 . After serving a minimum of four years, male convicts had the right to request a free passage for their wife and family. The Papers contain lists of those making such a request, along with transportation details and the name and address of the wife. A number of petitions from husbands and wives, and prisoners' letters, are also included.


To celebrate the Australian Bicentenary of 1988, all of these records were microfilmed, and a database of the surnames they contain was created. This is now available on-line. Copies of the microfilms and the database were presented to the Australian government and can now be found in many state archives. The National Archives in Bishop St also retains copies, and the database in particular can save a great deal of time and effort. It is now on-line at the National Archives website. It supplies enough details from the originals to identify the relevant record.

For obvious reasons, the records relating to free settlers are more scattered and less easily researched. The single most useful source for early settlers, also invaluable for convicts, is the 1828 census of New South Wales, published by the Library of Australian History in 1980. Although the precise place of origin is not recorded, the details include age, occupation, marital status, and household. For later settlers, the University of Wollongong in Australia has produced on microfiche a complete index and transcript of all information concerning immigrants of Irish origin recorded on ships passenger lists between 1848 and 1867. The later lists in particular are extremely useful, often recording the exact place of origin as well as parents' names.

Other than these, the principal records likely to be of relevance are in the Colonial Office Papers of the United Kingdom Public Record Office at Kew, class reference CO 201.

This class contains a wide variety of records, including petitions for assisted passages, emigrants lists, records of emigrants on board ship, petitions from settlers for financial assistance, and much else. A number of these have been published in David T. Hawkings Bound for Australia, (Sussex: Phillimore & Co., 1987).