Searchable Records!

The National Archives of Fiji is working on a searchable list of Girmitya. All the names, from all the immigration passes and other records are being transcribed and posted online. These lists can also be downloaded as PDFs for you to look through offline later.

The online list consists of persons name, father's name, ship, and passenger number. With this information you can easily request a copy of the original record.

Records in the series include:
     Immigration Passes from 1879-1916
     Register of Indian Immigrants from 1879-1916
     Plantation Register 1879-1916
     Repatriation Register 1881-1921
     Death Register 1879-1927.

So far names starting with A-M are available to view online, and they continue to work on the rest of the list. The current list can be found at Girmit.org

With India looking to strengthen ties with Fiji, and those in Fiji starting to search for their Indian roots, this is a great resource. I look forward to searching through the records myself and finding family.

A Fijian Indian Finds His Ancestors

It's always nice to hear stories about people finding their roots. Last week I came across this article about a Fijian Indian who found some of his ancestors and their village in India. It even takes him to Basti district (where some of my husband's family comes from). It seems to have taken him 20 years to get to them, but I'm happy he finally found some family history and relatives.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/How-this-Fijian-girmitiya-found-his-India-home/articleshow/50608918.cms

I am still on the hunt, but hopefully we too can have a happy ending to our search for history.

Finding Ancestors in Uttar Pradesh

The tourism department in Uttar Pradesh India is working on helping people find their roots. They have launched a new section of their site for people of Indian origins to do genealogy. It's free to register with the site, but if you want them to help you find your ancestors, it'll cost US$150 (they'll refund half if they don't find anything).
I personally think it's great that they are specifically reaching out to the descendants of Girmityas to help people find their ancestral homes and villages. I know that it's mostly in relation to tourism for the area, but any genealogy/family history progress is good in my opinion. I hope that their site expands and they include searchable information for others to look through. Definitely a site to keep your eye on for the future.

Family Tree Writing Conference

India has a genealogy society called Vanshavali Sanrakshan and Samvardhan Sansthan (Family Tree Preservation and Conservation Oganization). The national president of the organization says there are some 3,500 registered family tree writers in India.
Today they are having a one day conference in Jaipur, with about 400 writers from around the country in attendance.
It's very exciting to see more interest in genealogy and writing family trees happening all over the world. 

Hindu Pilgrimage Records Online

FamilySearch just added 256,816 more images of Hindu Pilgrimage records to it's online image collection. They aren't indexed, and are in Hindi (and possibly other languages, I haven't looked too deeply into it yet), so not usable by me yet. But, my husband might be able to translate some for me.

 

 

These records contain lots of family information for those who made these pilgrimages. The information can include names of ancestors, ancestral villages, dates of births marriages and deaths, and info about the family they marry into. They don't mention women much though. But, some of the records currently online date back to 1194! How cool is that!

 

I guess I have more Hindi learning to do (I can currently only read half the alphabet).

Genealogy Conference

Last weekend I was able to attend a genealogy conference put on by the Washington State Genealogical Society and hosted by the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society. It was my first time at such an event. Normal I probably wouldn't have gone. While I know they try to keep the cost down, it still does cost money. And they are usually far enough away from me that travel expenses make it difficult. But, this one was within driving distance of my house (only 40 minutes away). So, I convinced my husband that it was worth the $100 for two days and a banquet. And I convinced my mom to babysit all 4 of my kids for 7 hours each day.

The conference was good. I really enjoyed myself and learned a few things. Being fairly introverted, I didn't meet many new people, but the few I did talk with were very friendly and nice. I did notice that I was one of maybe 5 people under the age of 40 there. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just an observation. And I got to met and hear from D. Joshua Taylor, who is apparently a 'famous genealogist' and is on tv (which is probably why I've never heard of him, I don't have tv). He too is under 40 (yay, now there were 6 of us there).

I went to classes about national and state archives, US vital records, writing about family history, publishing your family history, internet research, citing sources, Evernote (and other non-genealogy software), and German immigrant research. Time constraints being what they are, and having to choose between different classes, I was unable to go to classes on using various evidences, DNA genealogy, census records, using timelines, digital scrapbooking (not that I need a class in that), masons and other fraternal organizations, and getting more from ancestry.com. The only thing I think was missing from the conference was more information about searching internationally. But I understand that such classes would be beyond the scope of the conference, and too difficult to include.

Would I do it again? Probably. In fact, they are having one next year in the same place.

Uttar Pradesh to Help in Ancestor Search

While speaking on the radio in New Zealand, Uttar Pradesh State Minister Madhukar Jetley said their state government will soon be launching a website that could help Indians abroad gather information about their ancestors from India. Many Indians that came to Fiji in the Girmit era are believed to come from UP (my husband's family included). It seems they will be making NRI cards available to Fiji-Indians for the purpose of genealogy work.
Jetley said “Everybody will be having an opportunity to get a card, printed in their own home, through the computer, through the website in which they will be able to connect and re-connect and they will be able to join in the movement where they can go back to their roots and discover where they came from.”

- See more at: http://www.fbc.com.fj/fiji/21295/nri-card-to-track-ancestors

Family History Scrapbook

 

Along with researching my husband's Fiji/India roots, I am also working on stuff from my own family history. I won't bore you with all those details on this blog, but I was so excited about this one project I had to share.

My father is also a genealogist, and has been doing it for at least 25 years. He is the reason I got into it. So, for Father's Day, I made him a digital scrapbook of his genealogy. I only did 5 generations, because after that, information is a little sparse. I had the 10x10 inch book printed at Shutterfly (with an amazing 50% off deal). We don't have a lot of family photos, so I filled it with the actual records, including translations of everything not in English.

In the book I included what few family photos we have, identifying the people in the photos, family group sheets for his grandparents, immigration and naturalization information and papers, family trees that include siblings, census records, a timeline from 1800-1960, and a large 9 generation fan chart at the back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ordering Microfilm

FamilySearch and the LDS church have lots of Fijian records on microfilm. On the downside, they are not indexed or digitized yet (i.e. not searchable online). On the plus side, you can check out most of it to be sent to your nearest family history library to look through.

I have a few names and dates to start off my search, so I have ordered 4 rolls of film (2 births, 1 marriage, and a book on Indian migrants in Fiji). I hope I will be able to find the people I'm looking for and maybe enough info to need to order more film.
I hope one day they will get around to digitizing these so I won't have to order stuff and go to a library with a microfilm reader to look through it. It can be difficult to get a babysitter midday to drive to another city to sit and look through film. Oh well, I'm sure the work will be worth it in the end.

Intro

I have long been interested in genealogy. It is probably because my father is also into it. He is really the better genealogist of the two of us. But, I do love hearing the stories of my ancestors and finding missing people and even connecting with the odd 5th cousin twice removed. I always assumed I'd simply take over the work once he got too old and that would be it. But, I have found myself itching to do stuff now (why wait!). And this is where my husband enters the picture.

My husband loves his heritage, but doesn't know much about his family history. He is an Indian from the Fiji Islands. His family immigrated from India to Fiji a few generations back (one grandfather, and 3 sets of great-grandparents). The last time we visited family in Fiji I made him gather as much family history info as possible from living relatives. He even got me photographs of 2 of his grandparents birth certificates.

So, with my dad researching my family, I have decided to research my husbands. I am hoping that writing down my goals and putting things out there for all to see I may get more done (it is motivation for me). Here I will figure out how to order and view microfilm from Fiji, find ship records of their immigrations, and eventually I hope to find records in India (which is harder than it seems). Who knows we may even find living relatives in India.

snapshot of a portrait of Shyam Lal (grandfather) as a young man