Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (59 page)
Read Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy Online
Authors: Nick Barratt
â¦Trace Afro-Caribbean, African and Asian ancestors
The best resource is www.movinghere.org.uk (see
page 375
). In addition, The National Archives provides an online exhibition of sources at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory
.
Civil registration and parish records in the West Indies can be used to track ancestors back to the emancipation of slaves in 1833, whilst the slave registers and other sources at The National Archives and relevant local archives can be used to work further back in time
.
Two good websites are The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk, and www.rootsweb.com, with links to the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
.
The Black Cultural Archives are at 378 Coldharbour Lane, London. Rrecords of the British in India are housed at the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections at the British Library
.
Various restrictions were placed from 1962 onwards, as it was felt that numbers now needed to be controlled. Hence, two Immigration Acts were passed in 1962 and 1968 to stem the flow. Commonwealth immigrants now had to apply for a work permit to be able to gain employment in the UK (unless they applied for a passport in the United Kingdom). Some specimen records of these work permits can be found in The National Archives series LAB 42.
Additionally, if your immigrant ancestor arrived before 1960 on a passenger ship it is possible to trace his or her arrival on the passenger lists in BT 26 (mentioned above).
Once immigrants had arrived in the UK some, depending on when they arrived, could seek to become British citizens. This could be granted through a process of either denization or naturalization. Denization was slightly different from naturalization in that although the individual would be protected by the Crown and law, he or she would not be able to vote, had to pay the same alien rate of tax as before, and could not apply for military and civil occupations. Some early immigrants chose denization over naturalization as it was the less expensive option. Naturalized citizens were awarded exactly the same rights as native subjects. It was not universal practice for immigrants to choose to do either, however, as both procedures entailed a cost and only minimal advantage was gained.
An alien was granted the status of a denizen by letters patent from the Crown. Once a denizen, the individual was entitled to purchase land only â the inheritance of land was still prohibited. Additionally, only children born after the individual became a denizen would be entitled
to British citizenship. Records of denization are to be found at The National Archives, in series C 66 enrolled within the patent rolls. A supplementary patent roll in C 67 also contains further records. Both series date to the thirteenth century and the early denization records, prior to 1509, have been transcribed in the
Calendar of Patent Rolls
. This publication does not index individuals by name, but searches should be conducted under the headings âdenizations', or for the early rolls, âIndigenae'. Indexes are also available for the later period, from 1509 onwards to 1800, published by the Huguenot Society (
see page 368
). The Huguenot Society's indexes can be viewed at The National Archives and other large reference libraries.
Naturalization was a more costly option than denization and, therefore, even less popular. This was especially the case prior to the passing of the Naturalization Act of 1844 as prior to that date it was only possible to become naturalized through a private Act of Parliament. Additionally, anyone seeking naturalization had to take Holy Communion in the Anglican tradition (thereby excluding non-conformists and Jews). However, once naturalized the individual would enjoy the full rights awarded to natives.
The House of Lords' Record Office has the original acts from 1409. The National Archives has an incomplete set of Private Acts in its series C 65. Additionally, KB 24 and E 196/86 contain records of naturalization granted to all foreign Protestants who took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy in open courts. This enabled people to become naturalized without having the need of a Private Act of Parliament. Once more the Huguenot Society has published the information found in these oath rolls.
Naturalization records from 1922 onwards are subject to closure rules of a maximum of 100 years. However, due to the Freedom of Information Act the Home Office will review the closure status of each file upon request
.
After 1844 naturalization became the responsibility of the Home Office and, as it was now a far cheaper option, it rose in popularity. The Home Office would only allow naturalization after the candidate had been satisfactorily investigated. The documentation produced by these investigations is part of the naturalization papers records that are held at The National Archives. They can be found in the following series:
â¢
Â
HO 1: 1844 to 1871
â¢
Â
HO 45: 1872 to 1878
â¢
Â
HO 144: 1879 to 1934
â¢
Â
HO 405: 1934 to 1948
The above series refer to the naturalization papers and not the certificates themselves. The papers do contain a great deal of interesting personal information but researchers may also wish to view the certificates. The system of enrolling certificates in close rolls was used until 1873. The certificates were also kept in the series HO 334 for the years 1870 to 1969. The series is organized by certificate number. Up until 1934 the naturalization papers mentioned above should also give the certificate number, and finding the certificate is a straightforward task. Alternatively, there are indexes to the certificates in The National Archives. The Home Office chose not to keep any certificates after June 1969, although the indexes do continue after that date.
Further series may be of relevance. The scale of European immigration to the UK in the 1930s and 1940s led to a proportionate increase in those seeking naturalization. The papers for a few famous people can be found in HO 382. The remaining surviving documents are in HO 405. Unfortunately, this series does not include every individual who sought naturalization as the Home Office destroyed the majority of the records. A 40 per cent sample survives, some of which is still with the Home Office. The National Archives has all records surnamed with the initials A to N. As mentioned, these records are subject to closure rules.
As well as being granted British citizenship immigrants could also lose the same right, either voluntarily or involuntarily. The Crown had expelled aliens at various points in time. Additionally, the Aliens Act of 1905 gave the government the power to deport aliens if they did not comply with the regulations in the Act. Those who were deported between 1906 and 1913 are recorded in series HO 372. The series includes names of deportees, nationality, reason and date of deportation.
Suggestions for further reading:
⢠Immigrants and Aliens
by R. E. Kershaw and M. Pearsell (The National Archives, 2000)
Additionally the 1870 Act of Naturalization gave the right to children born of naturalized parents to renounce their citizenship. Such a procedure was known as a âdeclaration of alienage' and records can be found in series HO 45, HO 144 and HO 344/259.
Migration: Emigration
The previous chapter outlined the means by which you can trace any ancestors who moved to Britain from overseas countries â but the journey was not just one way. Millions of Britons left these shores both voluntarily and at the forcible insistence of the government (mainly convicted criminals), and so a sudden disappearance of an ancestor from your family tree might be explained by looking into the many emigration records that are described in this chapter.
When researching your family tree you may come across an ancestor who migrated from Britain and Ireland to settle in another country. People elected to migrate abroad for a variety of reasons. Many went in search of a better life to escape poverty, others to flee religious persecution; some went unwillingly, convicted of a crime and transported to one of Britain's colonies. Although the Industrial Revolution increased employment in urban areas through the nineteenth century, many people in rural areas found their livelihood threatened as the mass production of textiles replaced many rural cottage industries. One way to escape this was to emigrate. Indeed, many poor emigrants may have been given state assistance when seeking a new life abroad.
âHundreds of thousands emigrated in search of a better life.'
The most popular locations where Britons chose to start a new life
were North America, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa. After the end of the First World War the British government began officially to support migration. In 1919 a scheme was introduced to aid the migration of ex-servicemen and in 1922 the Empire Settlement Act was introduced, providing support for families to migrate to the dominions. During this period the government felt that the British race as a whole would benefit from sending people away from overcrowded cities to a better quality of life and helping single women to find husbands in dominions where women were a minority. Another less known policy of migration adopted by the British government was the child migration scheme to Australia, South Africa and Canada, popular from the late nineteenth century onwards. This will be discussed in further detail below.
Many of the early New World settlers were Puritans trying to find a home to practise their religion without fear of persecution. The most famous example of this was the arrival of the
Mayflower
on Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, in 1620, carrying a group of Puritan pilgrims
.
It is estimated that many hundreds of thousands emigrated from the British Isles since the beginning of the seventeenth century. One of the first and most famous emigrant settlements was that of Jamestown, founded in Virginia, North America, in 1607. A group of 108 settlers left from London and established the first successful permanent English settlement in the New World. Soon after that date many more groups of English settlers began arriving and colonizing the New World and also the islands of the West Indies.
Thousands of emigrants arrived in the New World during the course of the seventeenth century, seeking a better life. The numbers did not decline after the American War of Independence in 1776 and the next century saw further large waves of migrants arriving from all parts of Europe, including Britain and Ireland. Indeed, the ties between the United States and Ireland have remained strong to the present day as many Americans are still aware of their Irish ancestry. Migration from Ireland was particularly strong in the nineteenth century as poverty was so rife and, in particular, many people left to escape the devastating effects of the Great Irish Famine in the 1840s. It is estimated that approximately 1.5 million Irish migrants moved to the United States and Canada in the ten years following the famine. The population of Ireland declined steadily from the 1840s due to migration, and this situation was only reversed in the 1960s. The success of the Industrial Revolution in Britain meant that the level of emigration was less severe but the numbers were still substantial. Some estimate that around 2.4 million English people emigrated between 1551 and 1851 and a further 3 million Britons migrated between 1870 and 1920 alone (although approximately 25 per cent of these later migrants returned to Britain for a variety of reasons).
The other popular destinations for British and Irish migrants were Australia, Tasmania (originally Van Diemen's Land) and New Zealand, although initially many arrived there against their will through the âtransportation' system. Indeed convicts were also transported to North America until the War of Independence in 1776, although the numbers were far smaller than those transported to Australia.
Settlement in Australia didn't begin until the late eighteenth century. The British government decided to use Australia as the new penal colony (after losing America) and the first fleet arrived on 26 January 1788 (the date now celebrated as Australia Day). The fleet contained 1,500 new settlers, half being convicts. They landed in Sydney Cove and on 7 February 1788 the British colony of New South Wales was formally declared. Large-scale migration to Australia began from this time and the numbers arriving increased rapidly after 1815, when government policy actively encouraged settlement by ensuring free settlers could arrive and purchase land at minimal costs. The discovery of gold in the 1850s was another important factor behind the decision to move to Australia. Convicts continued to be sent to Australia until the system was abolished in 1868, by which time over 150,000 had been sent to Australia and Tasmania (around 30 per cent of whom were Irish). The numbers of free settlers leaving Britain and Ireland were much larger, however, and continued into the twentieth century.
The Board of Trade retained outgoing passenger lists on a similar basis to incoming lists discussed in
Chapter 22
. They are found in The National Archives series BT 27 and were kept from 1890 to 1960, detailing the name of each passenger, their age and occupation. The series is currently being transcribed and made available in digital format online at www.findmypast.com. At the time of publication all lists had been placed on the website from 1890 to 1939. The digitization of this series has greatly facilitated its use as it is now possible to search for an individual by name. Previously it was only possible to find an individual if the name of the ship he or she travelled on was known. It is possible to search the index free of charge, but viewing the data will incur a cost. The series covers the years of mass migration between 1890 and 1914. It was only after 1914 that migration began to be controlled on a stricter basis.
