Information in the Orphan database
Much of the material in the database, particularly for the girls who arrived in Sydney, NSW, is provided by the Board of Immigration in the State Archives of New South Wales [SANSW] and appears on the ‘shipping lists’. This includes name, age, native place, parents’ names (whether alive and where living) orphan’s religion, whether they had relatives in the colony and if they had any complaints about the voyage. Religion, domestic skills and literacy is not usually available for those into Port Phillip. Other information, such as first employee, applied to those who came on the Earl Grey, Lady Peel, William and Mary, Lismoyne, Panama, Thomas Arbuthnot, Diadem, Derwent, Lady Kennaway, Eliza Caroline, Pemberton and New Liverpool is from enclosures in the Governor’s Dispatches available on microfilm from the Mitchell Library and some from the Public Record Office of Victoria. This information is slowly being added to the individual orphans’ entries on the website.
BG numbers relate to the Poor Law Union records held in the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin [NAI], the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast [PRONI] in Ireland or sometimes Poor Law Guardian Minute Books or Registers, which are held in County Libraries throughout the Republic. These mainly appear as extracts from workhouse indoor admission and discharge registers- regrettably few of these records survive. On rare occasions there are details about the workhouse orphan immigrants extracted from the Poor Law Union Guardian Minute books. Thus, for Jane McAllister per Earl Grey, we know from the Armagh workhouse register BG2/G/2 Entry 868 that she was from Charlemont, Kinego near Amagh and was thinly clothed and destitute when she entered the workhouse.
Im Cor refers to a letter in one of the five bundles at SRNSW 4/4635-4/4641 which is Immigration Correspondence, usually with the Immigration Agent’s office between 1844 and 1852. Often these are merely notes of the orphan being distributed throughout the colony such as to Maitland, Bathurst or Moreton Bay. On rarer occasions, the correspondence is extensive. For example see Margaret Devlin per Earl Grey in the database.
Register 1, 2, 3 held in SANSW 4/4715 – 4/4717 is the ‘Register and applications for orphans’ and gives information about their early days in the colony.
Appendix J, K or L are appendices to the ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Irish Female Immigration’, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, 1858-59, vol.2, pp.372-450 and reproduced in Trevor McClaughlin’s Barefoot and Pregnant? Irish Famine Orphans in Australia, Volume 2, published by the Genealogical Society of Victoria, Melbourne, 2001.
SANSW also contains much information relating to the early lives of the girls in the colony. Some of this information can be accessed from indexes produced by Mrs. Joan Reese which is available at the archives and some libraries and genealogical societies in Australia on microfiche, CD ROM or USB. General immigration correspondence for 1846-53 [9/6189 – 9/6198] and Immigration Deposits [4/850 – 4/851] and other material is also available at SANSW some of which may now be available on Ancestry. Some information for those sent to Port Phillip is also available at the Public Record Office of Victoria [PRO Vic] and to a lesser extent for those sent to Adelaide, at the State Records of South Australia.
Orphan Wages indicates references taken from ‘Wages Paid to Orphans Index 1849-1851’. This was indexed by Pastkeys and is available on CD-ROM. It includes data on 612 Irish orphan girls, their employers and other relevant persons mentioned in the records held at State Records of NSW. It shows name, ship, and often employer, money paid on their behalf, for example to purchase shoes or clothes and often supports other data, such as disposal lists, which names employers. Extracts from this for the individual girls is ongoing. Additionally, Ancestry now provides a digitised index to The ‘Wages Paid to Orphans Index 1841-1851’.
Most of these young women were employed as apprentices- an example of an apprentice’s indenture can be seen in ‘Barefoot & Pregnant?’: Irish Famine Orphans in Australia’ by Trevor McClaughlin, vol.2, p.32.
Much of the detail of the orphans’ individual lives has been contributed by descendants. We welcome your contributions and encourage you to share your findings with us others through this website. Ideally, we would like to see documents (where possible) to authenticate the life stories of these women. In a few instances we have found this information to be incorrect and have updated it. Our ongoing thanks goes to Dr Trevor McClaughlin whose initial research still forms the basis of the data captured here.
Abbreviations:
PRONI – Public Record of Northern Ireland, Belfast
SANSW – State Archives of New South Wales, Kingswood
NAI – National Archives Ireland, Dublin
WPO – Water Police Office
Im Cor – Immigration Correspondence – see above for explanation
