Land Research for Family Historians 2nd edition

The 2nd edition of my Land Research for Family Historians in Australia and New Zealand is now available for pre-order, printed or e-book.

The general principles and types of records have not changed, but where to find them and the names of the (usually) government repositories have changed in the ten years since the 1st edition. The book covers land records such as grants, Torrens titles, maps and plans, in all the states and territories of Australia, and New Zealand.

The photo on the cover is a part of the property of my great-great-grandfather Richard Eason near Blayney, NSW. The house where his children and grandchildren were raised is now only stones in the grass.

The book or ebook can be ordered from Gould Genealogy: https://www.gould.com.au/land-research-for-family-historians-in-australia-and-new-zealand-2nd-edn/utp0162-2/

NSW Land and Property Information for online research

The government department responsible for NSW land administration is currently called Land and Property Information. Here is a brief list of links to the most important websites for family and local historians.

Land and Property Information  –  http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/

LPI

Find place names

Historical Land Records Viewer (PIXEL)  –  http://images.maps.nsw.gov.au

HLRV Blayney

Current mapping and aerial (SIX)   –  http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au

SIX

Online searches and orders  –  https://shop.lpi.nsw.gov.au

LPI Online Shop

History

Atlas of Australia

Searching Guides – http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/publications/search_guides

  • Glossary
  • A Brief History of the Records of the Registrar General
  • First Stop Guide to the Records of the Registrar General
  • Old System Information and Search Guide
  • Searching the Registrar General’s Maps and Plans
  • Torrens Title Information and Search Guide

Revised 15 September 2014

NSW Will Books now on FindMyPast

FindMyPast Australia announced in June last year that they had acquired the rights to digitise and publish the Will Books held by State Records NSW. I don’t usually publish press releases but I was so pleased I just had to do it!

All things come to those who wait, as they say, and the Will Books are finally here.

The Will Books are hand-written copies of the wills made by the office of the Probate Registrar. They contain a summary of the probate process and the value of the estate. They have been on microfilm for some time, and I imagine it was the microfilms that were digitised. The original will is kept in the probate packet, access to which is restricted until the packets are sent to the Archive at State Records NSW. See the entry for this series in Archives Investigator.

The records are easy to find and download. I searched first for all my Easons, because even though I have images of the actual probate packets I had never looked up the wills in the Will Books. Here is the entry for Irwin Eason, who has his will drawn up in November 1914, after the oubreak of World War I, and died on 12 October 1945 having seen both world wars. Irwin died childless and left his estate to his beloved wife Annie.

4-310621 Irwin Eason

And here is the first page of an earlier, handwritten entry for Irwin’s uncle Robert Ewin, who died on 21 October 1921 survived by his second wife and nine of his eleven children.

4-111--2 Robert Ewin

 

These records are well worth searching for, even if you have the probate packet, for the easy-to-understand summary they contain.

It’s also worthwhile checking the transcription of the entry. It doesn’t transcribe the whole entry for you but it picks out the most important names for you. Here is the transcription for Robert Ewin:

4-111002 Robert Ewin transcriptionMake sure you search for absolutely everyone you can think of – the siblings and neighbours of ancestors can be just as informative as the records for your own ancestors, and may have references to them. The names of the heirs and executors listed in the transcription do not seem to be indexed so you can’t search for mentions of people in the wills of others, although perhaps that will come.

Did your ancestor go to school?

Castlereagh School

Castlereagh School, one of 5,300 NSW schools no longer in operation

Did your ancestor go to school? Was there a school in the area? Does the school still exist today?

I’ve previously published a number of resources to help you research your ancestor’s education:

  • timeline of the milestones in NSW public education
  • an explanation of the types of government schools
  • instructions on how to find information about your ancestor’s local school, particularly the Department of Education school file

Just because there was a school in the area, though, didn’t mean that your ancestor attended. To find out when your ancestor went to school you need to know whether school attendance was compulsory during his or her childhood years, and under what conditions.

Here is a brief timeline of compulsory school attendance:

Before 1848 – no government schools.

1848-1880 – attendance not compulsory.

1880-1916 – attendance required between the ages of 6 and 14 years for not less than 70 days every half year. Exemptions could be obtained if the school was more than two miles away or the child was incapacitated or otherwise being instructed.

1917-1939 – attendance required for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon for all children from 7 to 14 years for every day that the school was open. Similar exemptions except the children older than 11 years had to be more than 3 miles from school.

1939 – attendance required for children from 6 to 14 years.

1940-1943 – a higher school-leaving age was phased in over 3 years, to 15 years by 1943.

1944 – special schools introduced for blind and infirm children between 6 and 15 years who could not be educated at ordinary schools.

Another important aspect of school attendance was school fees. School fees were used to supplement the teachers’ income until 1880, when the government paid the whole of teachers’ salaries. The cost of fees and the number of children in a family had a big influence on whether a child was able to attend school.

1848 – local school boards could set the rate at between  penny to 1 shilling per child per week.

1853 – a minimum of 3 pence per child per week was set, with the local school board to determine any amount above this rate.

1867 – fees set by the local school board had to take local economic conditions into account. Fees ranged between 6 pence and 1 shilling per child, with reductions for additional children in the same family.

1880 – fees reduced to 3 pence per child per week to a maximum of 1 shilling per family for Primary School children.

1883 – High School fees set at 2 guineas per child per quarter.

1893 – High School fees raised to 3 guineas per child per quarter.

1906 – Primary School fees abolished.

1911 – High School fees abolished.

1923 – High School fees of 2 guineas per child per quarter re-introduced, subject to a means test.

1925 – High School fees abolished.

No matter how important parents considered the education of their children to be they could not always afford the school fees. Attitudes to the education of girls may also have been an issue, despite the legal requirement for both boys and girls to be at school. Lists of defaulters often appear in school files at State Records NSW, and these may the only mention of your ancestor in the files, as enrolment lists rarely survive.

From these timelines I can see that my grandfather Richard Norman Eason, who was born in Greghamstown, near Blayney, in December 1900, probably started school in early 1907, the fourth of the five children in the family to attend school. As the fees for Primary School were abolished the year before his parents could afford to have four children in school.

Richard stayed at school until late 1914, an ominous year. His older brother, Eric, enlisted but at 14 Richard was too young to go to war and he worked on his father’s farm. He was a farmer and grazier for the rest of his long life, and I always thought that his big round writing probably hadn’t changed much from his school days all those years ago.

Source – J. Fletcher and J. Burnswoods, Government Schools of New South Wales 1848-1983, Department of Education, 1983.

There is a wealth of incredibly useful information published in old books that are no longer in wide circulation. This book is an old foolscap-sized publication which I bought at the recent State Records NSW Open Day for about $1.00. The book is falling apart and it doesn’t fit on my bookshelf with the other books. The information in the book, including the list of schools, is now available online and updated where necessary at http://www.governmentschools.det.nsw.edu.au/facts/attendance.shtm.

 

Government Gazettes and Police Gazettes

Government Gazettes and Police Gazettes are an enormously rich source of information for family historians. They can be useful for filling in some of the detail about the lives of our ancestors, and in many cases can solve mysteries.

NSW Government Gazettes

Government gazettes contained all the administrative detail that affected the lives of ordinary citizens going about their daily lives – such as laws and regulations, licenses, land auctions and sales, unclaimed mail, and much, much more. Records of convict assignments and absconding may appear nowhere else but here. Sailors who deserted their ships are listed, as are government employees. Court notices of probate and bankruptcies, livestock brands, and petitions.

Your ancestor should be in a government gazette if he or she:

  • leased, purchased, forfeited land
  • worked for the government
  • tendered for public works
  • died
  • went bankrupt or insolvent
  • had unclaimed mail
  • was a convict
  • was assigned a convict
  • had a livestock brand
  • had a license to run a pub, sell liquor, cut timber
  • signed a petition

Notices of this type were published in the local colonial newspaper until a regular government publication was established:

  • New South Wales – 1832
  • Tasmania – 1825
  • Victoria – 1843 (Port Phillip)
  • Queensland – 1859
  • South Australia – 1839
  • Western Australia – 1836
  • Northern Territory – 1927
  • Commonwealth – 1901

All are still published today, although mostly online rather than printed, and with much less of interest to family historians.

Police gazettes are where the juicy stuff was going on. They were published weekly and distributed to police stations for the information of the local constabulary in order to help them with their work – describing offenders, listing licensees, and so on. Later gazettes in the early-to-mid twentieth century contain lists of known offenders with photographs, for the information of police who may come across them.

In many States publication ceased in the 1980s, as methods of electronic distribution of information became available. Some States publish them to this day, but access is still restricted.

The contents of police gazettes vary slightly by state, but they contain most of the following:

  • Warrants for arrest and details of crimes
  • Arrests, convictions, discharged prisoners
  • Property stolen and recovered
  • Stolen cattle and horses, including brands
  • Escaped prisoners, ship’s deserters
  • Missing friends
  • Deaths reported to police
  • Police appointments, instructions, lists
  • Magistrates, Justices of the Peace
  • Licensed sellers of liquor, wine and tobacco
Police Gazettes were published in the following years:
  • New South Wales – 1862-1982
  • Tasmania – 1861-1933
  • Victoria – 1853-1994
  • Queensland – 1864-1982
  • South Australia – 1862-present
  • Western Australia – 1876-present (restricted)
  • Northern Territory – 1900-present (restricted)
  • Commonwealth – 1 January 1901-present?

It is important to look for your ancestor in other colonies/states, as people travelled over the borders as easily as we do today, particularly if they didn’t want to be found.

Photo of NSW Government Gazettes from the 1850s taken by the author at the Society of Australian Genealogists headquarters in Kent Street, Sydney.

Land Research for Family Historians in Australia and New Zealand

Land Research for Family Historians in Australia and New Zealand

My new book Land Research for Family Historians in Australia and New Zealand is out now at Gould Genealogy and History.

In the book I have tried to display the main types of land records available and give a summary of where they can be found in each Australian state and territory, and in New Zealand.

Here’s the blur from the back cover:

Land research can tell us so much about how our ancestors lived and worked. It can help us find out the truth about stories we’ve heard, and can give us a much richer picture of our ancestors’ social and economic position. It they owned a house, business premises or rural property there are records to be found, many of which contain a wealth of information.

We can also break down brick walls using land records that we have been otherwise unable to solve. Buying or selling property may have been the only time our ancestors dealt with government in colonial times, and land records can contain evidence such as birthdates and names of family members; information that is recorded nowhere else.

This book will introduce you to the main types of records you can find, such as deeds and grants, Torrens titles, Crown leases, selections and conditional purchases, closer and solder settlements, title applications, maps, and plans. We will look at what they mean and where to find them in New Zealand and each Australian state and territory.

Whether you are researching the history of your house or tracing the history of an ancestor through the property they owned, this book is for you.

Contents:
Abbreviations
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Why land research?
3. Challenges
4. Where to start
5. Where to find land records
6. How to find land records
7. Old System grants and deeds
8. Crown leases and licenses
9. Torrens Title
10. Title Applications
11. Government purchase schemes
12. Maps ad plans
13. Local land records
14. Putting it all together
Addresses
Further reading
Glossary
Index

 

Ordering films in the new FamilySearch

FamilySearch, or what we used to know as the Family History Library, has an enormous number of resources for family historians in their library in Salt Lake City. They have travelled the world collecting original material by microfilming it, and these microfilms can be ‘borrowed’. If you have a FamilSearch Center nearby, or a society library designated for lending films, you can borrow the films and research them without having to travel to Salt Lake City. In most cases the microfilms were also donated back to the archive or repository, protecting the original records from wear and tear.

Go to FamilySearch and click on the word Catalog under the main heading.

The new catalog search looks like this:

FamilySearch catalog

When I’ve typed in ‘Fiji’ I get a long list of possible places. I think it’s best to just use ‘Fiji’ to start with, without getting too specific.

FamilySearch results for Fiji

Birth, marriage and death records are held under Civil registration. If you click on any of these entries you will see what records they hold. For example, if I click on Land and property – indexes I can see:

Fiji land and property indexes

If I click on the last of these I can see the individual film entries. The film numbers are what I need to order the film:

Fiji land records card index

To order a film, you can click on the film number, which takes you to another page: https://familysearch.org/films/. You need to be signed in to do this; signing up is easy and free. You can order a film on short-term loan for 90 days or long-term loan for extended periods.

Just enter the film number:Film ordering

My most convenient library is the Society of Australian Genealogists and the website remembers that setting for me. You can change it at any time.

You can then go on to find more films, or checkout and pay by credit card or PayPal.

Once you’ve placed your order and paid for it you can track the status of your order at any time. You’ll get an email when the film has been received by your library, and you can go there and look at the film. Some libraries charge an extra fee for handling the film on top of what FamilySearch charges.

Bear in mind that the 90 days starts on the day the film is sent, not the day it arrives in your library. So get in and look at it as soon as you can.

Early Censuses and Musters

From fairly early in the history of the Colony of New South Wales there have been counts made of the number of people living in it. People were named individually, making censuses and musters useful to us when trying to find out where a person was living and what they were doing.

Here is a rather poor copy of a page from the 1837 Muster of Convicts:

Page from the 1837 Convict Muster
Page from the 1837 Convict Muster

In the early days of the colonies of Australia censuses involved nothing more than gathering every person together in one place and counting them. This was called a ‘muster’, and is similar to the process used to count sheep before herding them off to the stockyards.

The first census as we know it, where people were counted in their homes, was in New South Wales in 1828. It had been brought to the Governor’s attention that free settlers could not be forced to attend a muster…

As more information was required, more questions were asked. An important consideration in the beginning of the new colonies was whether there was enough food to go around, so the early musters indicate whether each person was dependent on government stores for food. Only heads of households were listed by name, with dependent wives, children and servants counted but not named. As the inhabitants started to grow their own food it was important to know what they were growing, so these questions were asked.

Here is a list of the early censuses and musters available for New South Wales with their availablity to researchers.

1800-1802

A muster was taken between Jul and August 1800, when Governor Philip Gidley King assumed control of the colony. Additional musters were taken at the same time of year in 1801 and 1802.

Baxter, Carol J. Musters and Lists, New South Wales and Norfolk Island, 1800-1802. Sydney: ABGR, 1988.

Governor King’s Lists 1801 can be found on PRO Reel 10 and the Norfolk Island Victualling Book 1802 on PRO Reel 14.

1805-6

A general muster of prisoners and freemen was taken on Tuesday 12th August 1806, with the landholders mustered on Thursday 14th August. The muster gives information on ‘how employed’ or ‘with whom lives (females)’, which is information that is available nowhere else. A Land and Stock Muster was collected on the same day, containing acreages of the different crops, numbers of horses, cattles, sheep, goats and hogs, numbers of bushels of wheat, maize and barley on hand, and the numbers of persons and whether victualled by the government, with remarks about residence.

These musters have been transcribed in:

Baxter, Carol J. Musters of New South Wales and Norfolk Island, 1805-1806. Sydney: ABGR, 1989.

The Norfolk Island Muster of 1805 has been transcribed in the same volume, as has Samuel Marsden’s Female Muster 1806. The Reverend Samuel Marsden collected information on the females of the colony, probably from the original 1806 muster. This muster classifies the women as ‘concubine’, ‘married’ or ‘wife’, and records, where possible, where the woman was married and numbers of legitimate and ‘natural’ children.

Images of the 1806 muster is available on PRO Reel 72 and on Ancestry. Marsden’s muster is at the Mitchell Library in Sydney.

1811

The muster was taken between 5 February and 5 March 1811. Individuals are listed alphabetically within category – male convicts, female convicts, free men and free women. Information listed:

  • Name
  • Ship
  • When convicted
  • Where convicted
  • Sentence
  • Remarks

There is a transcription in:

Baxter, Carol J. General Muster of New South Wales, Norfolk Island and Van Diemen’s Land, 1811.Sydney: ABGR, 1987.

The NSW version of the 1811 census can be viewed on SRNSW Reel 1252, and the British version on PRO Reel 61 and on Ancestry.

1814

The 1814 muster was taken between 17 October and 16 November 1814, and gives a brief description of occupation and whether on or off the stores. A transcription is available in:

Baxter, Carol J. General Muster of New South Wales, 1814. Sydney: ABGR, 1987.

The original records can be viewed on SRNSW Reel 1252.

1819

A general muster taken in November 1819 can be viewed on SRNSW Reel 1252. There is no index or transcription.

1822

A general muster was taken on the 2-13 September 1822, and a Land and Stock muster taken around the same time. The General Muster gives:

  • Name
  • Age, including an indication the parents of children
  • Arrival Status
  • Present Status
  • Ship of Arrival
  • Colonial sentence
  • Sentence
  • Occupation
  • Employer
  • Where

The Land and Stock Muster gives:

  • Residence
  • Name
  • How land held
  • Whether resident on farm
  • Acres in wheat, maize, barley, oats, peas/beans, potatoes, garden or orchard
  • Numbers of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs
  • Bushels in hand of wheat and maize

Both the General Muster and the Land and Stock Muster have been transcribed:

Baxter, Carol J. General Muster and Land and Stock Muster of New South Wales, 1822. Sydney: ABGR, 1988.

Images of the General Muster is available on PRO Reel 72 and on Ancestry. The Land and Stock Muster is only available on SRNSW Reel 1252.

1823-25

In 1823 a General Muster was taken in September 1823, and a muster book compiled by the Colonial Secretary’s office. Subsequent musters in 1824 and 1825 were taken at the same time of year, but instead of compiling new lists the decision was made to update the 1823 list instead, resulting in a much more complete and more accurate list. Additional details were added up to 1832.

The muster includes:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Status
  • Ship of arrival
  • Ship year
  • Sentence
  • Occupation, Employer, etc

The 1825 muster was the last muster. Free settlers were increasingly unwilling to attend musters, and the government  realised it had no power to compel them.

A transcription can be found in:

Baxter, Carol J. General Muster List of New South Wales, 1823, 1824, 1825. Sydney: ABGR, 1999.

Ancestry has digitized images of the muster books, which are also available on PRO Reel 66.

1828

The 1828 Census was taken in November 1828, although returns straggled in early the next year. This was the first census to be taken in Australia and the only census to survive in its entirety to the present day. About a quarter of the householders’ returns survive.

Both colonial and British copies survive, as do most of the householders’ returns. There are differences in each, so it is important to check them all if possible.

Malcolm Sainty and Keith Johnson (editors) have compiled a database on CD 1828 Census Revised Edition which collects data from both the Australian and British versions of the census together with the returns of the householders themselves. This is the most complete list available, as there were many transcription errors in the compiling and copying of the lists, and some people were left out of the lists completely.

1837

The 1837 Convict Muster is more of a compilation than a traditional muster, and as such is more accurate. The new governor, Sir George Gipps, needed to establish an accurate count of the convicts in the colony as it was likely that transportation would soon cease.

The muster includes:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Ship
  • Year
  • Where Tried (often not filled in)
  • Master
  • District
  • Remarks (such as ‘Ticket of Leave’ or ‘Married’)

The muster has been transcribed:

Butlin, N.G., C.W. Cromwell and K.L. Suthern. General Return of Convicts in New South Wales, 1837.Sydney: ABGR, 1987.

Images are available on PRO Reels 71 and 72, and on Ancestry.

The 1841 and later censuses will be covered in  future post.

Blue Books

Fiji Blue Book 1893Blue books were used to send data back to the Colonial Office in London about how the Colony was doing. Every Colony had to send one every year, including Fiji. From what I can find out they started in 1876 and finished in 1940. The task usually fell to the office of the Colonial Secretary.

Blue Books give a snapshot of the country in time, and since the snapshots are taken every year you can get an idea of how the country is developing over time. Revenue and expenditure, population, education, imports and and exports, agriculture, total grants of land, gaols and prisoners, criminals, lunatic asylums, hospitals, charitable institutions, banks, railways and roads; nothing was overlooked. The British Government was paying for this colony and it wanted to know what it was getting for its money.

Blue Books also list government employees. All of them. So if your person of interest was working in the government or holder of a recognised native office you can follow him or her over time to see what position was held.

The headings listed in the Contents page for 1890 were:

Blue Book Contents 1890

Here is a piece of a random page from the List of Officers on page 77 of the 1890 edition:

List of officers

You can see everyone here from the Chief of Rotuma and the Buli Bua down to a clerk in Suva Hospital and another in Levuka Post Office. The numbers in the right column refer to the page in the report where the job is described. I’m sorry I didn’t check the page where the Chief’s jobs are described!

Another interesting section is the answers to set questions about prisons:

Prisons and Prisoners 1890 p197

As onerous a task as it must have been for the Colonial Secretary and his Office to compile these reports every year, we historians must be grateful that they did so.

The Mitchell Library in Sydney has a collection from 1890 to 1940.

The National Library of Australia has them on microfilm from 1876 to 1940 with some gaps.

The University of Queensland has a run from 1889 to 1940.

Other Australian libraries have shorter runs. Check Trove for details.

NSW Lands Department User Guides

The NSW Lands Department, or Land and Property Management Authority as they prefer to be known [or Land and Property Information as they are now known – 2012], have reformatted and republished their collection of User Guides. Here is a complete list, blatantly lifted from their website:

First Stop Guide to the Records of the Registrar General (PDF 1.2MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

The First Stop Guide is the first of five publications that detail the history of and information about searching and accessing land titling records in NSW. This guide aims to be your “First Stop” in helping you decide which publication(s) suits your particular searching needs.

A Brief History of the Records of the Registrar General (PDF 3.1MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This publication offers a brief history of the Office of the Registrar General since its inception in 1843 and the records it holds which date back to 1792. It also describes how land was initially acquired and consequently managed.

Old System Information and Search Guide (PDF 9.8MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide explains the intricacies of Old System land title and offers advice and tips on how to search the indexes and documents that have been registered with the Registrar General since New South Wales (NSW) was founded.

Searching the Registrar General’s Maps and Plans (PDF 4.7MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide has been prepared to provide a reference guide to Land and Property Information (LPI) mapping and plan resources and as a research tool for historical inquiry.

Torrens Title Information and Search Guide (PDF 5.0MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide describes how Torrens title information has been recorded historically and offers practical information on how to locate current and historical Torrens title information.

I haven’t examined them in detail as yet, but on first inspection they appear to be much more manageable and more concise than the old ones. The Old System Information and Search Guide is 45 pages and is much clearer and more friendly than the old 148-page User Guide to Old System Searching published in December 2009.

Here is an example. This is the first page of Chapter 1 of the old (2009) and new (2011) versions:

NSW Lands old Old System Guide Chapter 12009

NSWLands Old System Guide Chapter 12011

No comparison really. The descriptive text appears to be the same, at least in the first few pages, but the explanations are much clearer.

I recommend you go and find these guides if you have any interest in land and property in New South Wales. Researchers from other States are also likely to find the explanations useful, as the types of land records are similar in all States.

With grateful thanks to the NSW Land and Property Management Authority