British India

The Asiatic Journal

An often overlooked resource in tracing ancestors in British India and elsewhere is The Asiatic Journal. It went by different titles. For my present discussion I want to discuss the first three titles of this series taking the discussion from 1816-1845.

Contents and Images of The Asiatic Journal

The affairs of British India were published twice a year in The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies. Each month is then divided within the journal with news of the area. This is a major source for locating news “on the ground” about British Subjects, including the Irish, in British India. This can include births, marriages and deaths, government business, military appointments, furloughs, promotions, ecclesiastical appointments, passengers on ships and interaction with the locals.

Many of these are online at GoogleBooks and Archive.org and elsewhere. You have to think of this source as a newspaper covering an extended period of time. In the beginning of the source will be a list of what is in the journal. It is divided by area presidencies. In British India there were three: Bengal, Bombay and Madras. Each office handled its own affairs and reported accordingly. The amount of Europeans coming and going from British India is amazing.

Serial Titles for The Asiatic Journal

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies (1816-1829) was sponsored by The East India Company. Within it are detailed articles on the political, economic and cultural developments in the area. It became the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia (1830-43) and was issued three times a year. It became the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany (1843-45).

Applications for Genealogy

I used The Asiatic Journal recently to trace the origins of a ship from British India on its route to the port of Valparaiso, Chile, then up to California when it was part of Mexico (1821-1848) on its way back to India. Since my subject was an Irish man who settled in Spanish California (pre-1821) I traced the route of the ship and realized it was possible his family had immigrated to Chile first, where he learned Spanish, and then as an adult moved up the coast. This source opened up new possibilities in my research!

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India Office Family History Search

15 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

The British Library’s India Office Family History Search is a must for genealogists. The India Office Records is a collection of several archives: East India Company (1600-1858), Board of Control (1784-1858), India Office (1858-1947) and the Burma Office (1937-1948). It covered a vital part of the British Empire from 1600-1947 in what is today India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. Other areas connected to British India, such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa are also represented. In total representation is over 300 collections and over 3000 smaller deposits of Private Papers relating to British India.

British Subjects Documented in the Records

Within these collections is a wealth of genealogical information concerning the European and Eurasian population of British India. Biographical information can be found for officials and non-official residents. Since the East India Company and India Office had staff also based in Great Britain, these records also document them. Employees included civil servants, military, mariners, medical, chaplains, railway workers and law officers. Non-officials included merchants, planters, free mariners and missionaries.

Types of Records in the India Office Database

The “India Office Family History Search” is free of charge. It includes 300,000 births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, burials and biographical notes taken from a variety of sources. The database has scores of Irish born officials and non-officials. The website provides a “Dictionary and Glossary” of terms and abbreviations found in the records.

Even if only one relative of your family who immigrated to North America or elsewhere was in British India, then those records may preserve where that one person was born. If you cannot find where your branch of the family came from using North American records, for example, then switch to the sibling or cousin who went to British India. With a collection of this size with a searchable online database, the chances of finding a long lost relative is very good.

British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia

23 Aug By Dwight Leave a Comment

The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) seeks to preserve graves from the Red Sea to the China Coast. Their website: www.bacsa.org.uk provides a wealth of information. It may be from the cemeteries and tombstones they are documenting you find that long Irish relative or that illusive birth place in Ireland carved on a tombstone.

Not only does the BACSA document the “British” cemeteries, but those from other European colonies. The East India Company had competition from Denmark, France, and The Netherlands. The BACSA estimates on the Indian Subcontinent alone there are more than 2 million graves of European merchants, military, civil servants, Anglo-Indians and their families.

The Society documents the locations of the cemeteries, transcribes the inscriptions and photographs the tombs and tombstones. They publish their findings. To date, they have sponsored over 100 projects utilizing the support of the locals to restore and conserve these graveyards.

The BACSA Archive is housed at the British Library in London: www.bl.uk/. It contains folders on the majority of cemeteries in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan with some from Afghanistan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East. Some of the graveyards documented no longer exist making the BACSA collections invaluable.

The “BACSA Search” feature allows you to search their published books under one unified index. You can narrow your search by country or graveyard or simply conduct a broader search. A list of their publications can also be found on the Society website.

This is a worthy organization which is often the only advocate for these historic sites. They not only encourage new members, but also they have a form online to inform travelers the correct information to seek if they find a graveyard or are visiting one in South Asia. You can help in the preservation process!

Who Were the Anglo-Indians?: An Introduction

9 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Anglo-Indians arose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of the British colonization of the Indian Subcontinent. While they are usually defined as mixed Indian and British ancestry, it’s more complicated. For example, in British India, the word “British” would have included the Irish. It’s not uncommon for Anglo-Indians to have Irish, Scots-Irish and Anglo-Irish ancestry. Anglo-Indians also include mixed ancestry from the old Dutch, French and Portuguese subcontinent colonies.

The Anglo-Indians became their own English speaking subculture within the British Empire, and were recruited as civil servants and teachers. They found themselves in a unique position in Indian society as they were a people without a caste, but their education and occupations created its own caste-like aura.

As merchants, soldiers, government officials, workers and pensioners flooded into British India (modern Bangladesh, Burma, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), they would often intermarry with the local population. It wasn’t until the first half of the nineteenth century that European women began arriving in British India. While these incoming British men did intermarry with Muslims and Hindus, they also intermarried with native Christians. It must be remembered that the Eastern Christians (Syrian Christians), Roman Catholics, and Protestants have a long history on the subcontinent.

Most Anglo-Indians would immigrate, especially to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and the USA. For this reason, you may find your Indian ancestor was actually Anglo-Indian with roots in Ireland. Prior to India’s independence in 1947, there were 500,000 Anglo-Indians residing in India.

More information can be found on www.anglo-indians.com and while the term Anglo-Indian is antiquated since 1947, it will be this term you will use in an Internet search to find additional material. Because of the Anglo-Indian association with the British Government on the subcontinent, they will found in the massive record collections generated prior to 1947.

India and the Colonial America Connection

15 Jul By Dwight Leave a Comment

Don’t be surprised if your Colonial American ancestors were actually from India. The colonial vocabulary used the term “East Indies” to describe the Indian subcontinent.

So how did these people get to the New World in the 1600s? The records themselves provide answers, and are extracted by Paul Heinegg as “Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware”: www.freeafricanamericans.com/East_Indians.htm

Mr. Heinegg, notes that East Indians came in bondage as indentured servants and slaves

from England. He documents East Indians from the court records in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. He notes that although they tended to marry into the Free Black community, they also intermixed with the indentured white community, many of whom clearly had Irish surnames. The court records used often use the term “East India Indians.”

One very interesting case from the Spotsylvania County Order Books (1735-38) showed the distinction between the East Indians and African slaves (page 440):

“Zachary Lewis, Churchwarden of St. George Parish, presents Ann Jones, a servant belonging to John West, who declared that Pompey an East Indian (slave) belonging to William Woodford, Gent., was the father of sd child which was adjudged of by the Court that she was not under the law having a Mullato child, that only relates to Negroes and Mullatoes and being Silent as to Indians, carry sd. Ann Jones to the whipping post.”

In this case, Ann Jones, a presumed white indentured servant, had a child by Pompey, an East Indian slave. The laws were already in place restricting white indentured servants having children with African slaves. Yet, it had not caught up with the East Indian issue. In the end, Ann’s sentence was the whipping post!

What a fascinating piece of history with records to back it up.

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