Family history and genealogy
Scope of collection
Family history and genealogy encompasses the lives and ancestry of individuals and families originating in or connected to New South Wales. It enables individuals with New South Wales ancestry to investigate their heritage.
Collecting aims and intentions
Materials that document the lives of individuals associated with New South Wales are collected to enable research into ancestral lines. Of key importance are compilations of names and milestone dates that enable systematic searching to identify members of an ancestral line.
Materials are collected that index primary sources and provide names of individuals and related dates and places, including indexes to registers of births, deaths and marriages, electoral rolls, shipping passenger lists, compilations of inscriptions from cemetery headstones and post office directories. Indexes to birth, death and marriage records published in newspapers and local newspaper indexes generally are of particular interest. Information is acquired identifying membership of trade and professional organisations or relating to historical events.
The subject includes the range of information sources used by historians investigating New South Wales history. These collections provide the family historian with information about the context and circumstances of their ancestor's life, including the prevailing conditions of the time. Materials may include diaries, maps and pictures that contribute to the study of a person or family.
Materials identifying individuals within the Aboriginal population, such as mission records, are of particular interest to researchers tracing their Aboriginal origins and family history.
Local history resources that document information about places and people in New South Wales are extensively collected.
Electronic online resources are acquired when available for their sophisticated searching facilities.
Existing collection
- Australian birth, death and marriage indexes
- Electoral rolls including the Joint Commonwealth-State electoral rolls and New South Wales State electoral rolls
- Printed materials including State based guides to New South Wales genealogical research as well as resources supporting research into ancestral lines and family histories related to New South Wales
- Biographical information, including current and retrospective collections of biographical dictionaries, encyclopaedias and Who's Who titles with substantial New South Wales content, biographies and autobiographies
- Family histories published in New South Wales as well as histories including substantial New South Wales content or interest
- Genealogical journals published in New South Wales
- Works containing substantial lists of names from Australia's colonial and twentieth century past, such as pioneer registers and convict lists
- Church registers originating in New South Wales, including details of births, deaths and marriages
- Shipping information containing lists of passengers, crew, arrival and departure details related to New South Wales
- Parish maps and subdivision plans for New South Wales
- Cemetery indexes to inscriptions found in New South Wales cemeteries as well as interstate cemetery records
- New South Wales published newspapers and a wide range of indexes to births, deaths and marriages published in local newspapers
- Telephone, postal and commercial trade directories of major towns and cities
- Local histories of New South Wales towns
- Family Bibles and other materials revealing family trees, charts and tables
- Listings of Australian Defence Force personnel such as Army lists identifying Australian soldiers
- Original papers, diaries, correspondence and journals of individuals and related materials describing the experiences of settlement in the colonies and voyages by ship
- Records of companies that assist in identifying and profiling employees
- Manuscript family histories and family trees of significant families
- Electronic resources including online databases and facilitated access to Internet resources bookmarked on the Library's Internet Links page under Family history
Some examples of unique or significant items
- Archives including War Office - Musters and pay lists 1732-1878; Letters and petitions from private individuals applying for assisted passages; grants of land in the Colonial Office; correspondence and medical journals kept on convict and immigrant ships from the Admiralty Office found in the Australian Joint Copying Project, a scheme to copy microforms relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific copied from the Public Record Office, London, and other British libraries
- Old Bailey convict trials between 1776-1870
- Telephone directories for Sydney from 1889 and New South Wales Country telephone directories from 1915
- A comprehensive collection of electoral rolls for New South Wales from 1842 to the present
- New South Wales census lists for 1828, 1841 and 1901
- Society of Australian Genealogists New South Wales church registers on microfilm
- Index to births, deaths and marriages registers at St. Catherine's House, London [microform]: England and Wales, Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, General Register Office; 1837-1983 indexes are presented alphabetically by quarter (i.e. March, June, September and December); from 1984 issued by the Office for National Statistics and presented annually according to event type.
- Mutch Index, a series of indexes believed to cover all extant birth, death and marriage records relating to New South Wales from 1787-1828. Mitchell Library
- Regional histories, for example Family entries, births, deaths, marriages, with some personalities, institutions and oddments in the Hunter Valley district, 1843-1884: register, collected and compiled by Ben W. Champion, [Newcastle, N.S.W.] 1973.
- Methodist church records.
Mitchell Library: MLMSS 197 - The Genealogical Research Kit produced by the Archives Office of New South Wales comprising the core of the State's historical records relating to shipping, convicts and births, deaths and marriages amongst others.
- Archives relating to the transportation of convicts from Ireland to Australia [microform], National Archives, Ireland comprising Irish transportation records containing the names of over 20,000 men and women who were sentenced to transportation or death between 1788-1868.
- Sands' directory for Sydney, 1858/9-1861, 1863-1864, 1865-1871, Sands directory for Sydney and suburban 1873-1900, Sands' directory for Sydney, suburban and country 1901-1923 and Sands' New South Wales directory 1924-1933. This post office directory lists householders, businesses, public institutions and officials. and Sands' New South Wales directory for ... : comprising amongst other information, city streets, suburban ... and miscellaneous lists.
- Documentary images including paintings, prints, drawings and photographs of ships, places and people, with particular emphasis on people and places of Sydney and New South Wales, for example the C. Dickson Gregory shipping collection (Mitchell Library: PXD 519) and Freeman & Co. studio portraits.
- Tasmanian Papers: a large collection of Tasmanian Government records mainly relating to convicts including convict arrival records, assignment lists, jury lists and some records of convict freedom.
Mitchell Library: Tas. Papers 1-342, Tas. Papers D 1-D 26 - Tindale Genealogies: Genealogies collected by anthropologist Norman Tindale from Aboriginal communities in New South Wales 1938; includes genealogical tables and photos.
- Australian Indigenous Index: A web based index to the Koori Mail newspaper facilitating access to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from May 1991 onwards; includes an index to biographical information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the magazines:
- Our Aim (1907-1961)
- Dawn (1952-1969)
- New Dawn (1970-1975)
- Identity (1971-1975) Australian Indigenous Ministries, formerly Aborigines Inland Mission, records of missionary activities in New South Wales partially indexed to name level, includes photographs.
