Archives Office of Tasmania : Brief guide 016 - documenting Tasmanian Aboriginal descent

Brief Guide 16: documenting Tasmanian Aboriginal descent

Starting the process

To document your Aboriginal descent you need to be able to provide a sequence of records going back from you to an identified or accepted Aboriginal person. A number of families of Aboriginal descent were identified living on the Bass Strait islands in the early 1900s but if your family tree doesn’t link up to these people then you may need to trace it back a further 70 or 80 years before there are records which identify the person named in the record as an Aboriginal person. As tracing back to all your ancestors could involve looking at records leading back to up to 100 people it is fairly important that you know the line of descent so that you do not need to check all these people to see which were Aboriginal. If you do not know the Aboriginal family line you may need to trace back them all which is a very time-consuming and sometimes complicated process.

The most important point to remember is that the process you use to establish Aboriginal descent is the same as that used by anyone interested in researching family history generally.

Once you have identified the branch of your family that you believe to be Aboriginal then you need to gather as much information about that family as you can working backwards from yourself. As you do this it is important that you keep copies of the material which gives the evidence of a line of births and parents across the generations to an Aboriginal person.

Among the resources that can help you do this and will assist in establishing event dates and therefore obtaining the required documents, are

Talking to family members who may have information about the family
Checking family records such as bibles, letters, diaries and photos
Searching published indexes to birth, death and marriage notices in newspapers
Searching published indexes to cemeteries such as those available on microfiche for Cornelian Bay and Queenborough cemeteries as well as the index to headstones (TAMIOT) published by the Tasmanian Family History Society

Birth death and marriage certificates from 1900 to the present are a useful source and one you may be forced to use if you have little knowledge of your family history past your parents or grandparents. These records are only available from the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. If you are applying in person you will need to do this at the Service Tasmania offices. There may also be restrictions on what you can receive for example you may not be automatically supplied with a copy of your parents marriage certificate even if you are willing to pay the fee.

Using the resources above you should be able to identify the family members who were born, married and/or died before 1900. Once you have done that you can continue your research by using the Tasmanian Pioneers Index (TPI) which is an index to the civil registrations of births, deaths and marriages from 1803 – 1899. This and the actual copies of the registrations are available in the Archives Office, as well as at some of the major libraries in Tasmania. Using the Tasmanian Pioneers Index followed up by copies of the records that it indexes, you should be able to work your way back step by step until you find a reference to the first registered event for your family in these records. This will usually be a marriage of a couple or the birth of a child to parents whose marriage you cannot find. If none of the people you have traced so far are identified in a record as Aboriginal then you will need to eliminate other possibilities for their appearance in the records.

What do you do next

Non-Aboriginal people arrived as either convicts or free immigrants (sometimes with government assistance) and it is not long after Europeans arrived that these two categories of people make up by far the largest proportion of the population and records relating to them need to be checked to eliminate the possibility that this is why the family appears in later records.

To check the possibility of the individual being a convict you can start by looking up the Index to Tasmanian Convicts which is available from the 'name indexes' section of the Archives Office website. You can also check the index of convicts applying for permission to marry, which is also available from the same section of the website.

To check the possibility that the individual arrived as a free immigrant you can use records listing passengers on ships. These records are somewhat less complete than the records of convicts but there is an index available at the Archives Office which lists those who paid their own fare or arrived under the various government assisted migration schemes.

If you need more information about the person you should also check the details on the marriage registration and or birth registration to make sure you have obtained all the information that is available in these records.

If you find that a child has been registered without a given name you can check relevant church records to see if the child has been baptised. You may also find you need to refer to church records if it looks like the family have not been diligent in registering the births of their children with the civil authorities. Most relevant church records are available at the Archives Office of Tasmania

Other sources which you can use for more information

Death notices which may have appeared in newspapers
Death registrations - to make sure you obtain all the information available; for example you can sometimes get place of birth on a death registration.
Wills can also be a source of useful family information

Some important points to remember

Records do not usually identify whether a person is Aboriginal
On the Tasmanian Pioneer Index the word unknown has previously been used in place of a family name for the mother this simply means that the mothers maiden name was not stated on the record that has been indexed. This is usually because it is taken from a baptism record which does not, in most cases, include the maiden name of the mother. She, like the child, would be known by the family name used by the father of the child.
Spellings of surnames will vary between records and you need to keep that in mind as you search.
There may not always be an obvious record of each generation but other records will generally provide enough evidence for reasonable assumptions to be made about the identity of people.
Records of births and marriages before 1896 do not provide a direct recorded link between the birth of a person and the same person being married or the parent of a next generation child

Ending the process

After following this process you may end up having found a record of an identified Aboriginal person, or the arrival of a convict or a free immigrant which will complete your search of the particular family line.

If you have traced back as far as you can and reached a point where you are unable to find a record of a convict, a free arrival, or a person identified as Aboriginal, then you need to consider the records you have available and make assumptions about what seems to be the most likely and reasonable explanation for the appearance of a person in later records. In making this sort of assessment it may be useful to seek advice and assistance from those who have knowledge of the recordkeeping practices of the time and experience in making judgements about the most likely explanations for the ‘lack’ of a record.