Tasmania/Lutruwita the large island off the south eastern point of the Australian Mainland, has been home to the Palawa / Pakana / Parlevar people for over 40,000 years[1].
The first documented sighting of Lutruwita by a European was in 1642. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, named Lutruwita the istland Anthoonij van Diemenslandt, after his sponsor, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies. In 1772, a French expedition led by Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne made landfall, and Captain James Cook also sighted the island in 1777. Small communities of whalers and sealers developed along the Northern Coast and nearby islands in Bass Strait. The whalers traded with the local aboriginal people and sometimes took aboriginal women (not always willingly) as brides.
The British anglicised the Dutch name to Van Dieman's Land and established their first settlement at Risdon Cove in 1803. A second settlement at Sullivan's Cove, where there was more fresh water, developed into Hobart Town[2]. The name Tasmania was formerly adopted for the colony in 1856.
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Understand the History of TasmaniaUnderstand the History of Tasmania
Aboriginal HistoryAboriginal History
Traveling across a land bridge to Lutruwita, the name for Tasmania in the palawa kani language, 40 thousand years ago, the Palawa or Pakana people were isolated from the mainland around 8000 years ago, when sea levels rose dramatically, creating what is now called Bass Strait. Their society developed in relative isolation, until the arrival of European explorers in the 18th century.
European settlement of Lutruwita was disastrous for the indigenous population. Conflict and disease decimated the population. From a pre colonial population of several thousand people, by 1830 there were barely 400 individuals left. Between 1831 and 1835, most of the Aboriginal population of Tasmania were removed to Flinders Island.
While there is a common myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were made "extinct" with the death of elder Truganini in 1876, descendants of Tasmanian born aboriginal women living with the whalers on Cape Barren Island have been recognised as being indigenous Tasmanians, although there is still some dispute over some of those claims within the aboriginal community[3].
Genealogical Resources for Indigenous People in TasmaniaGenealogical Resources for Indigenous People in Tasmania
Since Aboriginal culture was largely an oral tradition there are no records equivalent to European vital record registration available for aboriginal family history before colonisation. However, cultural practices and traditions in many regions have been reclaimed by the community, despite the dispossession.
Colonial and Post Colonial records relevant to indigenous family history research are held by a variety of institutions:
- IATSIS host a range of resources to assist people with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family history research, as well as Tasmania specific resources
- National Archives of Australia (NAA) in Hobart and Canberra hold several records and resources including the Bringing Them Home Name Index - a searchable list of names and places created from NAA files about First Australians.
- The National Library of Australia (NLA) holds a large range of books, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs and oral histories. Some material is easily accessible online via Trove. Material such as Oral Histories may need to be accessed in the library. NLA has a comprehensive Family History Research Guide. If you need assistance you can contact the library via their Ask A Librarian service.
- The Australian War Memorial holds information related to the military service of Indigenous Australians.
- Link-Up supports and assists Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Victoria and Tasmania who were separated from their families, communities, culture and land under past government legislation and who were adopted, placed in foster care or in an institution.
- Libraries Tasmania - Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry is a guide to identifying and tracing Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage and descent.
European settlement and migrationEuropean settlement and migration
The British settlement of Van Dieman's Land was initially developed as another penal colony, under the jurisdiction of New South Wales. As a result, many of the early records pertaining to Tasmania are actually located at NSW State Archives (MHNSW).
Penal colonies were set up at Port Arthur on the East Coast and the notorious Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour in the South West, where the most recalcitrant convicts were sent. Libraries Tasmania has a comprehensive Convict Research Guide.
After 1815, the proportion of free settlers increased with an influx of ex soldiers, veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, and others escaping the depressed economic conditions of Britain[4].
During the 1820s, agricultural activity increased, and as a result, the population of free settlers more than tripled, from 7,185 in 1821 to 24,279 in 1830.
During this time, the British authorities ceded rural land owned by the Crown to British colonists[5]. The system of land grants, whereby people were given an acre for each pound of cash or goods brought to the colony, was replaced in 1831 by the Bounty system. The government now helped pay the passage money for needed migrants, such as men with special skills and single women aged fifteen to thirty[4].
The authorities were fighting an uphill battle with settlers leaving Van Dieman's Land during the 1830s and 1840s to settle in the new colonies of Port Phillip (Victoria) and South Australia, and then flocking to Victoria and NSW during the gold rush of the 1850s. This led to change in the Bounty System rules, compelling assisted migrants to work for an employer for at least two years. The second half of the 19th century saw more non English migrants come to Tasmania. Six shiploads of German migrants arrived in 1855 and in the 1870s Chinese migration increased as work in the tin and gold mines increased.
Another interesting group were English army officers from India; 385 had arrived by 1891. Between 1886 and 1910 the Tasmanian government gave no support for migrants, but some settlers continued to arrive. They were still overwhelmingly Anglo–Celtic; in the early 1900s only 2.5 percent of Tasmanians were not born in Britain or Australia.[4]
After WWI several international companies, including textile mills Patons and Baldwins Ltd and Kelsall and Kemp, and chocolate company Cadbury, opened local factories in Tasmania, where lots of migrants worked.
After WWII, the £10 Pom scheme, an assisted passage program, encouraged more British migrants to come to Australia, but the government also supported people from other European nations, provided they stayed for at least two years in whichever state they were sent to.
The first large non-British group were 798 Polish soldiers who arrived in uniform in 1947–48. Another large grouping were the Dutch, who overtook Germans as the biggest group with a non-English speaking background. Many new arrivals worked on hydro-electric schemes and in industries such as the aluminium smelter at Bell Bay, the Electrolytic Zinc Works at Risdon and in forestry and mining, and so played a vital part in the state's economy.[4]
Migration to Tasmania slowed down in the 1970s. In the 2021 Australian Census, the population of Tasmania was 558,000, of which just over 15% were born overseas[6].
Genealogical Resources for non-Indigenous people in TasmaniaGenealogical Resources for non-Indigenous people in Tasmania
The Tasmanian Names IndexThe Tasmanian Names Index
The Tasmanian Names Index consolidates records from multiple sources and indexes, and connects these disparate records to individual people in one large database. The sources include, but are not limited to:
- passenger lists & census records
- convict & prison records
- deaths & wills
- marriage & divorce
- immigration & naturalisation
NewspapersNewspapers
Libraries Tasmania is a Principal Partner in Trove, a cross insitution Australian government initiative. Libraries Tasmania has worked since Trove's inception to contribute, fund, and facilitate the digitisation of hundreds of thousands of pages of Tasmanian newspapers.
Trove provides access to over 40 Tasmanian newspaper titles, including:
- The Advertiser (Hobart)
- The Hobart Town Herald and Total Abstinence advocate
- Tasmanian Morning Herald
- The Colonist and Van Diemen's Land Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser
- Emu Bay Times and North West and West Coast Advocate
- Launceston Courier
- Zeehan and Dundas Herald
Understand Tasmania's GeographyUnderstand Tasmania's Geography
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Tasmania is a largely rural state with smaller towns and villages spread across the state. The state capital, Hobart, has by far the largest population of just under 200,000. The next populous city is Launceston, in the centre of the island, with just over 80,000 residents, followed by Devenport, on the northern coast, with 25,000 people.
The Tasmanian Names index holds information on Land Grants between 1804 and 1935.
The Land Information System Tasmania (LIST)– is a government run online platform that provides access to land and property information and interactive mapping tools for Tasmania. LIST can be useful for genealogical research as it connects people, places, and land records.
LIST provides access to:
- Property and Title Records – historical and current property ownership information
- Cemetery Data – Some Tasmanian cemeteries are mapped in LIST
- Historic Maps and Plans – LISTmap overlays modern and historic maps, showing how land parcels, towns, and boundaries may have changed over time.
- Place Names – The database of Tasmanian place names (past and present) may help identify obscure localities mentioned in old records
Some records accessible through LIST link to the Tasmanian Archives, so researchers may find supporting documents such as deeds or survey records.
Libraries Tasmania also has a comprehensive research guide for land grants with links to maps and indexes in their collection.
See alsoSee also
Explore more about Tasmanian family history reecordsExplore more about Tasmanian family history reecords
MyHeritage holds several collections relevant to Tasmanian family history, including:
- Birth records 1803-1933 - collated by Libraries Tasmania
- Death records 1803-1939 - collated by Libraries Tasmania
- Tasmania Wills and Letters of Administration from 1813 - collated by Libraries Tasmania
- Tasmanian electoral roll 1916 - Information on approximately 135,000 electors in Tasmania who were registered to vote on the Commonwealth Roll of 1916; collated by the Queensland Family History Society.
- Hobart Town Gazette - 1844, 1861, 1870, 1880 - these hold a wealth of information including land sales, government appointments, lost stock, unclaimed letters, police reports, desertions, insolvency notices, permits, licences, and trademark applications.
- selected Tasmanian PO (Wise) directories
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