New South Wales was the first British colony proclaimed in New Holland. It was on 22 August 1770 that Captain James Cook took possession 'of the whole of the eastern coast, from latitude 38^oS. to this place, latitude 10½^oS. in right of His Majesty King George the Third', i.e. over only what are now the eastern parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

Formal possession on behalf of the British Crown, of the whole of the eastern part of the Australian continent and (this time including) Tasmania was not taken until 26 January 1788, whenCaptain Phillip's Commission, first issued to him on 12 October 1786 and amplified on 2 April 1787, was read to the people whom he had brought with him in the 'First Fleet'. The Commission appointed Phillip 'Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over our territory called New South Wales, extending from the Northern Cape or extremity of the coast called Cape York, in the latitude of ten degrees thirty-seven minutes south, to the southern extremity of the said territory of New South Wales or South Cape, in the latitude of forty-three degrees thirty-nine minutes south and all of the country inland westward as far as the one hundred and thirty-fifth degree of east longitude reckoning from the meridian of Greenwich, including all of the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean within the latitudes aforesaid of ten degrees thirty-seven minutes south and forty-three degrees thirty-nine minutes south'.

At the time of the initial settlement by the First Fleeters, the size of New South Wales (including Van Dieman's Land and New Zealand) was 4,103,987 square kilometres. In 1825, the western boundary was pushed back to the 129th east meridian which added an extra 1,341,971 square kilometres. The establishment of other colonies as well as Commonwealth territories has reduced the size of New South Wales to its present size of 801,428 square kilometres. Details of these changes are listed in Table 1.

New South Wales was originally settled as a penal colony. About 82,000 convicts were sent to New South Wales between 1788 and 1842. The first free settlers arrived on the Royal Admiral in 1792. The number of free immigrants to New South Wales was not great until the introduction of the 'Bounty Scheme' in 1832. This scheme lasted until 1845. The scheme involved paying a bounty to recruiting agents in Britain to find skilled labourers and tradespeople and ship them to Australia. The bounty was about 19 pounds for adults and 5 pounds for children.

The population increased slowly but steadily with occasional jumps coinciding with immigration schemes and gold finds and plateaux coinciding with division and the formation of other colonies and the halting of convict and other immigration schemes. Other details on population changes can be found in Table 1. New South Wales is presently the most populated state with an estimated total of 6,203,900 persons in 1996, representing 33.9% of the Australian population. The growth rate of 1.34% is just less than that of Australia as a whole.

Table 1. Changes in the Size of New South Wales
 

• Birth certificates can only be applied for by the subject or the subject's parents
  or if the date of the event was up to 1905;
• Death certificates can only be applied for by the Next of Kin, or if the date of
  the death was more than 30 year ago; and
• Marriage certificates can only be applied for by either marriage partner, or
  where the marriage took place more than 50 year previously.

More detailed information on services, fees, search facilities and privacy considerations can be found at the Registry’s very informative website with the URL http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/bdm/.

Certificate information includes:

• The NSW Genealogical Research Kit produced by the Archives Authority of New South Wales;
• Birth, Death and Marriage Indexes issued by the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages;
• Indexes of Convict Indents produced by the Genealogical Society of Victoria.

The Archives Authority of New South Wales has in its custody the largest and most comprehensive collection of public records relating to the early history of European settlement in Australia. Compiled in Government offices since 1788, these State archives date from a time when New South Wales comprised the entire eastern half of the continent, and they therefore cover the formative years of all four eastern states. These records have been copied onto microfilm to preserve them from natural decay and from greater use resulting from the increasing interest in genealogical research. To date about 2,000 microfilms have been produced and, since 1984, the Archives Authority has made the microfilms more widely available in the form of the Genealogical Research Kit.

The Kit is based upon 35mm microfilm, supplemented wherever practicable by microfiche. It is based on records which document the arrival of people in New South Wales from 1788 to 1900, including convicts, assisted immigrants and unassisted persons. Added to these are records of births, deaths and marriages; of naturalisations; of the employment of public servants; of land grants, publican's licences, depasturing licences, electoral rolls; and a wealth of other material useful to family historians as well as historians and researchers generally. In addition, many of these records have been indexed, which makes the researcher's task so much easier.

For more information, log on to the website of the Archives Authority of NSW on http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/

Part of the N.S.W. material in this book has been derived from these indexes. Information for New South Wales in this book includes births, deaths and marriage indexes for the years 1788 to 1905, as well as extracts of entries for baptisms, burials and marriages prior to 1856; convict indexes and indents for convicts transported to New South Wales between 1788 and 1842, and details of tickets of leave where found. In some cases (in the pre-1856 entries and convict data) the same person has been entered on more than one occasion. This is due to duplication of the church and indent records. I have included both for completeness of research sources.

Some of the earlier information I have collected has been derived from microfilm of original documents which in some cases through staining, fading or poor handwriting, the entries have been illegible. Some records were so poor, I have inserted question marks in place.

New South Wales Data

Birth Index to 1905 (Indexed by Date)

Birth Index to 1905 (Indexed by Name)

Birth Index to 1905 (Indexed by Parents)

Pre-1856 Baptism Records

Death Index to 1905 (Indexed by Date)

Death Index to 1905 (Indexed by Name)

Death Index to 1905 (Indexed by Parents)

Pre-1856 Burial Records

Marriage Index to 1905 (Indexed by Date)

Marriage Index to 1905 (Indexed by Name)

Marriage Index to 1905 (Indexed by Spouse)

Pre-1856 Marriage Records

Convict Indent Index (Indexed by Date and Name)

Convict Indents 1788-1842

Tickets of Leave Index (Indexed by Date Issued and Name)

Tickets of Leave Records

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