Immigration into Australia:
Online Indexes and Passenger Lists
Web
Sites for Genealogists - An
Australian gateway site for tracing your family history by Cora Num
Need Help with Shipping Research? See
Shipping and Migration Research on the Internet,
2012 and
How Did They Get Here? Arrivals after
1924, 2nd edition, 2012
. Click here
for details. See also
Migration Schemes and Passenger
Lists.
National
National Archives of Australia, Index
to Passenger Arrivals
1921-1950. For access click on
Search the
collection tab (yellow, top right) on the homepage. On the next screen
select
Search as a guest. You can then search using a Basic search,
Advanced search, NameSearch, PhotoSearch or Passenger arrivals index. Choose
the
Passenger arrivals index (top right tab). This online database
indexes inward passenger manifests for ships and aircraft arriving at Fremantle,
Perth Airport and outports. Currently arrivals at Western Australian ports
(1921-1949) and Perth airport (1944-1949) are available for searching. These
records include all passengers disembarking but also those travelling onto other
Australian ports such as Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. For further details see
Fact Sheet 220: Index to Passenger Arrivals.
Irish Famine Memorial, Sydney. This site commemorates over 4,000 single young
women, most of whom were orphans who arrived under a special emigration
scheme (the Earl Grey Scheme) designed to resettle destitute girls from the
workhouses of Ireland during the Great Famine. Online Resources include the
Famine Orphan Girl database, a ships database which includes shipping lists for
the 20 ships that brought orphan girls to Australia (Sydney, Adelaide and Port
Phillip) 1848-1850. There is also a list of the 400+ names on the
monument.
The
Ships List - Emigrants from Great Britain & Ireland to
Australia: 1825-1832 extracted from the British Parliamentary Papers
(1833, XXVI, 279). It is arranged by colony and lists name, trade, number of
persons in each family and amount (£) given to each. The ship of arrival is not
listed.
Ozships:
Australian
Shipping 1788-1968. This
site by Peter Larson lists shipping arrivals and departures. It also includes
92,000+ passenger list entries which can be browsed alphabetically. These are
linked to transcripts of the passenger lists.
Online AUSNZ
Passenger Lists. This gateway site is
designed to help family historians locate passenger lists for migrant ships to
Australia/New Zealand. It provides links to sites holding a significant
amount of passenger information and offers a lookup service for a
particular
ship.
A list of 14,000+ SS
Great Britain passengers on voyages from Liverpool to
Australia (1852-1875).
Immigrant
Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG) has
12,000+ passenger list transcripts online including ships to
Australia. Collections
include World War II
Refugees to Australia by Tom Stiglmayer
which lists migrants from Germany, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Romania. The index is arranged by year (1937-1966) with ships
listed alphabetically. Each ships' list has names, nationality
and reference.
New South
Wales
State Records New South Wales, Indexes Online,
Immigration include:
Updated•
Assisted Immigrants to Port Phillip (Vic) 1839-1851, Sydney and Newcastle 1844-1859,
Moreton Bay (Brisbane) 1848-1859, Sydney
1860-1879 and 1880-1896. This index lists names, age, ship’s
name, arrival year, port of arrival, remarks and references (microfilm reel
number) for access to the passenger lists. You can search these indexes
separately or do a combined search.
•
Miscellaneous Immigrants 1828-1843 index lists
9000+ names of passengers who paid their own fare
and some assisted immigrants. Details given include ship, names, age, date of
arrival, references (microfilm reel, page and item numbers), remarks and records series
(NRS) number. It does not cover all arrivals for this period.
•
Unassisted Immigrants
1842-1855 index lists
136,000+ passengers who paid their own way. It also includes ships' crew and
interstate or colonial arrivals. A search returns names, age, ship, status
(passenger, crew or master), arrival date, origin port, reference/reel and
remarks.
State Records offer a copying service of some indexes for a
fee but check below to see if the film reel is available as a free online
digitised microfilm. Alternatively many of the original records are
available at $$ Ancestry.com.
State Records
New South Wales pilot project to digitise microfilm shipping
lists. Use the online indexes listed
above to locate the reel number and then use the free online reel to scroll
through the digital copies of the passenger lists, ship by ship, just as you
would if using microfilm. Reels for these records series (NRS) are currently
available:
• List of Irish passengers arrived on the ship Sir Joseph
Banks, Oct 1828, NRS 5309
• Persons on early migrant ships, 1828-1832, NRS
5310
• Persons on early migrant ships, May 1832-Jan 1833, NRS 5311
• Women
on the ship Red Rover and other early migrant ships, 1832, NRS 5312
• Persons
on government ships, Aug 1837-1840, NRS 5313
• Persons on bounty ships
(Agent's Immigrant Lists), 1838-1896, NRS 5316, reels 2134-2145
• Persons on
bounty ships arriving at Port Phillip, 1839-1851, NRS 5318
• Germans on
bounty ships, 1849-1852, NRS 5320
• Members of the Family Colonization Loan
Society, 1854-1857, NRS 5322
• Passenger lists of the Family Colonization
Loan Society, 1854-1855, NRS 5323.
Note: More reels will be added as they
become available.
Ancestry.com offers access to indexes and digitised
images for New South Wales Assisted
Immigrant Passenger Lists 1828-1896 and Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists
1826-1922 . There is a
free name search with subscription, or pay to view, options available to access
the digitised records. This database covers the following records held by State
Records New South Wales:
• Returns of convicts applications for wives and families to
be brought to New South Wales at Government expense. (NRS 1190, reel 699)
• Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists). (NRS
5316, reels 2134-2143)
•
Persons on early
migrant ships. (NRS 5310, reel 1286)
•
Wage agreements and entitlement certificates of persons on
bounty ships (Agent's Immigrant Lists). (NRS 5315, reels 2449-2456)
•
Persons on bounty ships to Sydney,
Newcastle, and Moreton Bay (Board’s Immigrant Lists). (NRS 5317, reels
2458-2498)
•
Persons on bounty
ships arriving at Port Phillip (Agent's Immigrant Lists). (NRS 5318, reels
2143A-2145)
• Passengers arriving at Sydney 1846 (Agent's Immigrant Lists).
(NRS 5326, reel 2457)
•
Inward
passenger lists. (NRS 13278, reels 399-560, 2001-2122, 2751)
•
Reports of vessels arrived. (NRS
1291, reels 1263-1285, 2851)
Ancestry.com offers access to indexes and
digitised images for New South
Wales Immigration Deposit Journals, 1853-1900. There is a free name
search with subscription, or pay to view, options available to access the
digitised records. This database covers the following records held by State
Records New South Wales. New
• Immigration Deposit Journals (NRS 5264, 9 reels of
microfilm).
• Immigration Deposits (refunded or declined). (NRS
5266, 4 reels of microfilm).
This collection records the money
deposited to sponsor the immigration of a specific person and the reason for the
deposit being declined or refunded. The records include name, number of deposit,
date of deposit, age, estimated birth year, country and place of origin, ship,
date of immigration, nationality, amount paid toward cost of passage, sponsor
name, and reason for refund.
Ancestry.com offers access to an index
to Wives and Children of Irish
Convicts, 1825-1840. This index was originally published on CD-ROM by the
Central Coast Family History Society Inc., East Gosford and was
titled Wives & Children of Irish Convicts Petitioned by Husbands
and Fathers. This index contains lists of wives and children of
convicts transported to New South Wales who, at their husband's or father’s
request, were brought to New South Wales at the government's expense to join
their spouse or parent. The index also includes female convicts whose children
were transported with them. This index was compiled from musters and other New
South Wales records.
Mariners
and Ships in Australian Waters. This site, hosted by State Records of New South
Wales, is indexing and transcribing unassisted passenger lists 1845-1922 held by
SRNSW (NRS 13278). This ongoing project currently has lists for 1845-1883,
1886-1888 and 1909 complete with lists for 1884-1885, 1889-1902 and 1922 almost
complete. Lists for 1903-1921 are ongoing and are being added as they become
available. The transcripts of the passenger lists are linked to images of the
original records (free). Ship crew members are also listed on these records.
Updated
Society of Australian Genealogists - Online database Ships Muster Index: Passengers
and Crew Departing NSW, 1816-1825 by Norma Tuck. This index can be searched by names, ship and year.
The book Pure
Merinos and Others: The 'Shipping Lists' of the Australian Agricultural
Company by P. A. Pemberton, originally published in 1986, is online in PDF
format. Between 1825 and 1862 the Australian Agricultural Company and its
subsidiary, Peel River Land and Mineral Company brought over 700 men to New
South Wales from England, Ireland, China, Germany and Chile to work on their
extensive pastoral estates or at their colliery in Newcastle. Many were
accompanied by wives and families. This book is a must if you have family
associated with these companies. New
FamilySearch
by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. This site features free searchable Historical Record Collections. The record collections
for Australia and New Zealand include:
• Index to Bounty
Immigrants, 1828-1842
The online images are of the
original index cards. This index, compiled by Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints members is also available on SRNSW reels 30-37. It covers
persons on early migrant ships, 1828-1832 (SRNSW series NRS 5310); persons on
early migrant ships, May 1832-Jan 1833 (SRNSW series NRS5311) and entitlement
certificates of persons on bounty ships, 1832-1842 (SRNSW series NRS 5314). The
original records are held by SRNSW.
Peter
Madden's Emigrant Databases
for Galway, IRL (1828-1864), Tipperary, IRL (1828-1865) and
Inverness, SCT (1828-1854 ongoing). These databases record the details of assisted emigrants from
these counties to New South Wales and Queensland. They list name, age, year
and ship of arrival, native place, parents' names and residence plus the
names of relations in the colony.
Queensland
State
Records New South Wales, Indexes Online, Shipping and Immigration index to
Assisted
Immigrants
includes those arriving at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) 1848-1859.
Note: Passenger list images are available on Ancestry.com.au.
A fee ($) applies. They are also available through SRNSW free online reels.
Queensland State Archives
Indexes (QSA) to Assisted Immigration 1848-1912 list passengers from the United Kingdom and
Europe. Those who paid their own fare are not listed. The index lists names,
age, ship, date and QSA references. Records for the 1860s are incomplete. This
index is also on $$ Ancestry.com. Other free immigration indexes online at QSA
include:
• Assistant Immigration Agent Maryborough Index to
correspondence and papers re nominated immigrants, Europe 1904-1907 and the
register of prospective immigrants nominated for passage 1884-1896
•
Assistant Immigration Agent Maryborough 1875-1884 Index to
registers of rations issued to immigrants at Maryborough. It includes ship’s
name, when arrived, immigrants' names, rations issued and remarks. There are
some entries for South Sea Islanders
• Card Index to Nominated
Immigrants to Queensland 1908-1922 details those nominated or sponsored
to immigrate, those who made inquiries plus rejected applicants and applicants
who returned to country of origin. This index lists immigrant’s name, age, year,
ship, source card name and QSA references.
• Immigration Index
1922-1940. This index lists name, age, ship, ship no, date arrived and
QSA references. The passenger lists are arranged by migrant type, then by name,
age, male or female, married or single, juveniles 12-17 or infants, occupation,
nationality and religion. The remarks column can have a Queensland contact name
or nominator as well as passage loan amounts
• Passage
Certificates Index 1887-1906. This index to the register, kept by the
Sub-Immigration Agent, Warwick, records applications by the sponsors of
immigrants. The index lists name, notes (applicant or nominee), date, receipt
number and QSA references
• Passport Register Indexes
details the names of immigrants arriving in Queensland. They include the
Passport Clearance Register Index 1926-1935 and the Index to Passport Receipts
1930-1939
• Register of Immigrants 1864-1878 Index lists
immigrant’s name, depositor/applicant’s name, age, date of arrival and QSA
references. The register, kept by the Assistant Immigration Agent, Toowoomba,
includes date, name, age, trade, where living (country of origin), amount paid,
name of depositor and remarks as to where living in the district. The majority
of immigrants listed originate from Ireland
• Registers Immigrants,
Brisbane 1885-1917. The index lists names, ship and date of arrival,
page number and QSA references. The register can include age, married or single,
occupation, read, write, religion, county or country of origin, date of
departure from depot, whether under engagement, name and address of person by
whom engaged, or their own residence if they have one. This index includes
Russian migrants who fled the political troubles in both Russia and China via
Japan.
Once you have an index reference copies of the original
documents can be ordered from QSA for a small fee.
Ancestry.com
Queensland Immigration Indexes. This commercial site
offers:
• Index to Registers of
Passengers on Immigrant Ships arriving in Queensland 1848-1912
from ports in the UK and Europe. These registers do not
include passengers from New Zealand, the Americas or other non-European ports.
Details given vary but may include name, age, date and place of arrival in
Queensland, ship name, date and port of departure. This database covers records
held by Queensland State Archives, Series ID 13086, Registers of Immigrant
Ships' Arrivals, Reels M471, M473, M1075, M1696–1710.
• Maryborough
Queensland Australia Immigrants from the British Isles & Germany
1861-1891 . This
index, by Janet Reakes, is from original data held by the Queensland State
Archives. The index lists name, age, ship and year of arrival.
South
Australia
State Records of
South Australia offers online searching of Official Assisted
Passage Passenger Lists 1845-1886. Click on Access Collection
Catalogue then choose Searching from the left menu. A search of
this index returns surname or ship name, year, first name/list number, notes and
volume. Use the following sites to access transcripts of the passenger lists.
Updated
Family History South Australia - South Australian Passenger
Lists -
Shipping arrivals and immigration 1803 to 1854+ This on ongoing
project currently has passenger
lists for 1,320+ ships available. This database
is fully searchable.
Updated
The
Ships List - Immigrants to South Australia, (UK, assisted passage)
1847-1886. This ongoing project by Robert Janmaat currently has over
200 selected lists
for 1847-1864 available. A surname search of all Australian
lists
hosted by The Ships List is available by clicking on Passenger Lists.
The Ships List,
German
Emigrants to South Australia 1837-1860 by
Robert Janmaat. This site has transcripts of the passenger lists
online.
State Library of South Australia -
Horner Index to overseas
departures by passenger ship from South Australia 1836-1887. This card
index, compiled by Sally Horner from the
Register newspaper, is
available online as PDF files. It does not list interstate or intrastate
departures.
New
Tasmania - (See
also
Migration Schemes and
Passenger Lists)
LINC Tasmania
brings together the State Library of
Tasmania, the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office (TAHO) and others. Online name
indexes include:
• Arrivals - index
of passengers and ships arriving in the 19th century. This index includes
passengers, crew, ship's masters and ships arrivals mostly to Hobart. This
ongoing project currently covers surnames beginning with ‘A’ to ‘K’ from about
the 1820s to about the 1860s. Free email copies of the actual records are
available by completing the online copy request form.
•
Departures - index of people leaving Tasmanian ports (1817-1867). This
ongoing index lists names; rank; ship, date and port of departure; where bound;
ship to colony; status and remarks. Records of departures from series POL220
have been digitised and are now available online.
Ancestry.com
offers access to indexes and digitised images for
Tasmania Passenger Arrivals, 1829-1957.
There is a free name search with subscription, or pay to view, options available
to access the digitised records. This database contains records held by the
Archives Office of Tasmania. It includes ship passenger lists and other
descriptive lists of immigrants arriving in Tasmania. Most of the records
are for arrivals at the port of Hobart, though some records contain registers
for arrivals at Launceston.
New
The
State Library of Tasmania’s, Our Digital Island
Indentured Servants of the Van Diemen’s Land
Company site was archived here in 2000. There are transcripts of the
passenger lists for the twelve ships that brought the indentured servants and
their families to Van Diemen’s Land 1825-1837. Details include name, place of
origin, occupation and spouse. Not all details are available for all ships.
New
Victoria
State
Records New South Wales, Indexes Online, Shipping and Immigration index to Assisted
Immigrants
includes those arriving at Port Phillip 1839-1851. Note: Passenger list
images are available on Ancestry.com.au. A fee ($) applies. They are
also available through SRNSW free online reels (See New South Wales).
The Public Record Office of Victoria
online databases include the following: Please note that the inward passenger
list images are available on Ancestry.com.au. A fee ($) applies.
•
Index to Assisted
British Immigration 1839-1871. A
search returns names, age, month, year and ship of arrival plus book and page
number which refer to the passenger lists held on microfiche.
•
Index to
Unassisted Inward Passenger Lists to Victoria 1852-1923. This database lists unassisted passengers to Victoria from
British, Foreign and New Zealand Ports. A search returns name, title, age,
arrival date, ship name and fiche reference to the relevant passenger list.
•
Index to Outward Passengers to Interstate,
UK, NZ and Foreign Ports 1852-1915. A search of this index to passengers on ships
leaving Victoria returns names, age, ship name, departure month and year,
destination, film references (month and year) and page number. This ongoing
project will eventually cover to 1923. The passenger lists are held on microfilm
by PROV (VPRS 3506) and can be viewed in PROV reading rooms.
Ancestry.com offers access to indexes
and digitised images for Victoria -
Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists 1839-1923. There is a free name
search with subscription, or pay to view, options available to access the
digitised records. This database covers the following records held by the Public
Record Office Victoria:
• Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (British Ports).
(Microfiche VPRS 7666, copy of VRPS 947)
• Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (Foreign Ports).
(Microfiche VPRS 7667, copy of VRPS 947)
• Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (New Zealand Ports).
(Microfiche VPRS 13439, copy of VRPS 947)
• Register of Assisted Immigrants from the United Kingdom.
(Microfiche VPRS 14)
Western
Australia
National Archives of Australia Index to Passenger Arrivals. An online database to Inward passenger manifests for
ships and aircraft arriving at Fremantle, Perth Airport and outports.
Currently arrivals at WA ports (1921-1950) and Perth airport
(1944-1950) are available for searching. For access log onto RecordSearch, then
select Passenger Index. These
records include all passengers disembarking but also those travelling onto other
Australian ports.
Ancestry.com offers access to Western Australia, Australia, Crew and
Passenger Lists, 1852-1930. There is a free name search with subscription, or pay to
view, options available to access the digitised records. This database covers
the following records held by State Records Office of Western Australia.
• Registers of Inward and
Outward Passengers, 1893-1896. Accession Number 113, AN
371.
• Lists of Emigrants by Colonial Land and Emigration
Commissioners’ Ships, 1851-1867. Accession Number 115, AN 371.
• Survey
Office, Passenger Lists – Inwards from Overseas, 1829-1930. Accession Number
297.
• Arrivals and Departures for Fremantle and Outports, 1898-1915.
Accession Number 457.
• Colonial Secretary’s Office, Passenger and Crew
Lists, Manifests Inwards for Fremantle, 1880-1898
(incomplete).
• Colonial Secretary’s Office, Passenger Lists of
Immigrants for Certain Ships, 1876-1877. Series 1243, Consignment
633.
• Register – Expirees and Conditional Pardons, 1863-1894. Series
1135, Consignment 318, Item 1.
Western Australian Genealogical Society. Click on
Genealogy WA Data for access to 1829
Shipping Arrivals to the Swan River Colony. This information has been
transcribed from early newspapers and includes passenger lists.
Home ©
Cora
Num 1997-2012. Last updated 30 January 2012