The importance of being diligent!

Following an interesting discussion on the Victoria Genealogy Facebook page today, I realised I needed to share a file I produced some years ago.

We were discussing what details you find about immigrants to Victoria on the various “passenger lists” when in fact people were talking about different things – searchable indexes on the PROV web site or Ancestry or TROVE or State Records of New South Wales or wherever.

Apart from people not understanding what they were looking at there was also a lack of knowledge on just what was available.

Although many of these lists are being digitised, the microfiche [images] of these passenger lists are still readily available in many archives and libraries.  And even when the lists of passengers are fully digitised and indexed I bet all the invaluable introduction “pages” on the Assisted Immigrants microfiche never see light of day.  That’s a tragedy because there is SO MUCH INVALUABLE information on those pages – including a full alphabetical list of all ships with Port and Date of Departure, Port and Date of Arrival, info re Nominal and Disposal lists, and Comments such as the scheme the ship was sailing under.

I’ve added some pages to the beginning of the file – a quick reference to determine exactly which fiche on which you’ll find the relevant Book / Page number.  Basically I got sick of guessing and trying fiche after fiche before finding the right one.

Here is my Reference / Information file for Victorian Assisted Immigrants.   Take time to look at it – I hope it will help with your research.