Tasmania’s Heritage: Name Index

The Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office is indexing various record collections and making them available in searchable databases in the “Name Index”:

Some of the record collections have digitized images to go with the index search. However, for those not digitized, with the reference from the index, a copy can be ordered from the archive. The collections are naturally packed full of Irish who arrived as convicts or as free settlers. The databases include the following:

Arrivals: This includes passengers and ships arriving mainly in Hobart in the nineteenth century. The source for this is a card index. Currently, surnames A-K are part of the Arrivals index.

Census Index: Most of the censuses were not retained by the government. However, what has survived for 1837, 1838, 1842, 1843, 1848, 1851, 1857 has been digitized. A listing of the districts and parishes enumerated are part of this database.

Colonial Tasmanian Family Links Database: Containing 500,000 entries, this database was created from mainly birth, marriage, and death records, held in the Archives Office. The linkage was developed by family historians from the former National Heritage Foundation in the late 1990s. The information is not necessarily verified.

Convict Applications for Permission to Marry: An index and digitized images of records for convicts who applied to marry free people or other convicts from 1829 to 1857.

Convicts (Tasmanian): This is an index to all convicts transported to Tasmania or who were convicted locally in the colony. The collection covers 1804 through 1853 when transportation stopped. The locally convicted convicts extends the database information to 1893. There are about 76,000 entries.

Departures: This collection includes indexes and digitized images to what records are available for departures from Tasmanian ports from 1817 through 1867.

Divorces: An index to the divorces heard before the Tasmanian Supreme Court from 1861 to 1920.

General Index: The sources for this database come from a variety of records. The references are mainly to people’s names, but subjects are also included. Some of the records have been digitized.

Inquests: This is an index and digitized images concerning inquests into people’s deaths from about 1828 through about 1930. Inquests into fires are under the General Index database.

Naturalizations: This is an index and digitized images covering 1835 through 1905.

Wills: This database includes an index and digitized images of Wills and Letters of Administration from 1824 through 1989.