Passport Records

It's great to see more Queensland records being added to Findmypast - for example, the indexes to passport registers 1915-1925 and passport registers and receipts 1926-1939. Most applicants lived in Queensland but some gave an interstate or overseas address including England, Canada, Papua, Ceylon, Fiji and China.

The National Archives of Australia and Queensland State Archives hold various series of passport records. They include:

• Immigration Department: passport clearance register 1926-1935 (Qld State Archives series 7149; one item). This register gives the passenger's name, ship and date of arrival, State of disembarkation, ship and date of departure, passenger's reason for returning overseas, and whether he/she was planning to return to Australia.


• Immigration Department: passport receipts 1930-1939 (Qld State Archives series 10222; thirteen items). These are duplicates of passport clearances issued to assisted immigrants. They give the passenger's name, ship and date of arrival in Australia. Some also give the ship and date of departure and how long the person expected to be away.


• Passport registers 1915-1974 (National Archives of Australia, Brisbane Office). After the Passports Act 1920, Australian residents over sixteen years of age needed a passport if they left the country. This did not apply to those going to New Zealand, Papua or Norfolk Island. Others who were exempt included merchant seamen and defence force personnel on duty. The National Archives Brisbane Office holds passport registers 1915-1974 and various other records of people departing Australia. Some of those passport registers have been indexed in the Queensland Passports Index 1915-1925.

If a person 'vanished' (either temporarily or permanently), passport records are definitely worth a look. They can also reveal interesting information about overseas holidays or trips to visit relatives.

NOTE!  The transcription on Findmypast is a useful finding aid, but it does not include all details, so it is essential to get a copy of the original document. If you can't go to the Archives yourself, ask about my copying service.

For other countries, these links take you to lists of passport records on:

• Findmypast (including the British Index to Register of Passport Applications 1851-1903)


• Ancestry (including records for the USA, France, Portugal, Latvia and other countries).

(This post first appeared on https://qld-genealogy.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/queensland-passport-registers-1926-1939.html.)

My Web site has moved

Please spread the word...

Judy Webster's Web site has moved!

The site has advice and indexes that help genealogists to research local, interstate and overseas folk by using historical records. The emphasis is on unusual sources that are superb for problem solving.

Features of the new site include:

• 135 pages, and more than 53,000 names (including tens of thousands of people from other States and countries, especially the UK, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia and New Zealand) from Judy's indexes to original records in Queensland State Archives.


• Additional names from certificates, headstones, church plaques, published local histories, etc.


• Tips on how to research 'black sheep of the family' and people who 'vanished'.


• Unusual sources that are superb for problem solving (including records of asylums, hospitals, Police, Justice Department and Courts).

The site is now easier to use, with a different font, a new 'main menu' navigation bar, and 'breadcrumb' navigation links. Many pages have a section called 'Other Suggestions'. Before using the customised search box, read the search/navigation tips.

The new Web address is www.judywebster.com.au.

Please update your bookmarks and ChangeDetection settings, and notify family history groups, genealogy mailing lists etc.

Can't find a death? Maybe he/she died overseas. Check indexes on FindMyPast.
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C is for Cooktown, Croydon and Cunnamulla

For the letter 'C' in the 'Family History Through the Alphabet' challenge, I was tempted to write about cemeteries, churches and family surnames such as Campbell, Capsticks, Clark and Corduex. Instead I decided to list three Queensland towns whose records I have indexed.

C is for...

• Cooktown.  In the 1800s, Cooktown was the main port for the North Queensland gold fields. Local hospital records, which are very useful for family history, give information about people from all walks of life, including miners, sailors and railway workers. Many had spent time in other parts of Australia and in New Guinea and New Zealand. I have indexed Cooktown Hospital admission registers and some local petitions and school records.


• Croydon.  Another North Queensland mining town for which I have indexed hospital admission registers. During the 1880s, 70% of those admitted to Croydon hospital were born in Britain or Ireland, and about 15% were born in Australia's southern states, especially the Victorian goldfields. Some residents of Croydon moved to Western Australia when gold was discovered there. The index to Croydon Hospital admissions is now online, with Archives source location numbers.


• Cunnamulla.  My home town! I have indexed various records for Cunnamulla, Eulo and Thargomindah in southwest Queensland.

You will find more tips for family history in my other articles in this series.

Revenue from ads goes to Kiva

Index to Funeral Records 1972 - 2010

Would you think to look in Queensland for records of a burial or funeral service that took place overseas, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Fiji, Sweden, Greece, Hungary, Austria or the Netherlands?

Cemeteries and crematoria from all of those countries (plus all parts of Australia) are mentioned in records of Gregson and Weight, funeral directors at Caloundra, Maroochydore and Nambour on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

I recently bought Caloundra Family History Research Inc.'s new index (on CD-ROM), Gregson and Weight Funeral Directors, Caloundra, Maroochydore and Nambour - Index to Funeral Records 1972-2010. It lists (in PDF format) about 20,000 names (in two sections, 1972-1999 and 2000-2010), with surname, given name, age, death date or funeral date, place of burial or cremation, and a reference number. Aliases or nicknames are sometimes shown. Appendix 1 lists all cemeteries/crematoria mentioned, and explains how to contact them. Appendix 2 lists hyphenated or 'double-barrelled' surnames, which were not always recorded correctly in the index.

This very affordable index will be invaluable for finding deaths that are too recent to be in online civil registration indexes. There is a good explanation of abbreviations and the arrangement of entries, and a contact address for Gregson and Weight; but although the introduction says, We would be pleased if researchers would advise us of any inaccurate information, the author/publisher's address is not shown. The publication also lacks a proper title page (which should show title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, copyright notice and ISBN).

For more details about the index, contact Caloundra Family History Research.

Postscript, 2014: There is now an online database for various other Queensland funeral directors' records including Alex Gow, K.M. Smith, Cannon and Cripps, Metropolitan, Tucker and Nankivel, Lorisch, and Le Grand.