DNA and Genealogy

At Christmas my Indian husband took a DNA test with Ancestry.com. He just got the results. They weren't too surprising. It said his DNA was 78% South Asia and 14% Asia East. This is not uncommon for Indians in the northern states, since they are more likely to intermarry with other east asian groups. Many of the indentured laborers sent to Fiji were from Uttar Pradesh (a state in the north), his ancestors included (the ones we have found so far anyway).

What was a little surprising is that his DNA also contained 7% Melanesian and 1% Polynesian. So, one of his ggg-grandparents might have been Fijian, which we had never heard before. But, since at least 2 of his gg-grandparents were born in Fiji, although they have Indian names, it is possible that one was only half Indian. Time to do a little more climbing in the family tree.

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.

Girmit Day in Fiji

Every May 14th in Fiji there are celebrations for the Girmityas. The first ship of Indian indentured laborers arrived in Fiji on May 14, 1879. Today their descendants remember their sacrifice, their dreams, their hardships, and  honor their memory and legacy.
While Fiji still has problems with racism and the communities of native Fijians and Indians don't always get along, the celebration of Girmit Day is also used to help Indians work towards better relations with others.
India High Commissioner Gitesh Sarma said "The celebration today reflects modern Fiji where everybody is part of this country and has an equal chance to make a contribution in the development of the country."
Let's hope this spirit of hope and good will continues.
***
With Girmit Day there are often several stories in the news about the Girmityas. Here is a small sampling:
Old Girmit: A Journey of New Freedom
Celebrating the Life of Girmitya
Fiji Girmit's Great Legacy
Journey of 80 Years
Legacy of the Koya Clan in Ba

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. 

Happy Diwali 2014

This time of year is festive in Fiji. On Oct 9th they celebrate their independence from British rule. This year they held their first election in years, returning to a democracy after a coup that overthrew the former government. And there is Diwali, the Festival of Lights. This year the main day for the festival is Oct 23rd.

While this is mainly a religious celebration, there is plenty of room for a more secular interpretation if you aren't Hindu. For Hindus, the festival celebrates the return of Rama with his wife Sita, after years of banishment and Sita being kidnapped. For other religions it has significance too. Mainly it is a celebration of the victory of good over evil, light over darkness.

The main festival day occurs on a night with a new moon (so it's dark and you can't see it). It is much like New Years for America. There are lights, fireworks, yummy sweets, rangoli decorations, visiting family and friends, and general merriment.

Here is a lovely article from the Fiji Times about the significance of light in the celebration of Diwali in Fiji, and how it can bring us together.

Happy Diwali!

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.

FamilySearch Photo Duplication

A couple months ago I found out about a service that would have been helpful to know about earlier. I'm not sure why the 'help' people at FamilySearch and the Family History Library didn't just recommend this. They apparently don't know about it. Someone ought to tell them. Anyway...

FamilySearch has a FREE photo duplication service. If you have something specific you want a (digital) copy of, there is a simple form you can fill out and they will e-mail you an image of your document.

Now, you have to be specific, they won't do research for you, but isn't it nice to know they can copy stuff for you. Like, for instance, an emigration pass you know the exact name and record number for on a microfilm they can't/won't lend out.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Immigration Pass

In December I posted about getting a scan/photo of Parbhu's immigration pass. His wife, Ramdai had come to Fiji with him on the same boat. Our cousin had one immigration pass, but not the other. So, we set about trying to get a copy of it. We already knew the name of the boat, the date, the name of the passenger and even the passenger number (thanks to death and birth certificates that listed the info). You'd think it would be an easy thing to find.

 

First, we looked online. We knew the LDS church family history library has the microfilm that contains these records. But, it turns out, for no known reason, they don't allow you to 'check them out' from the main library. So, unless I take a trip to Salt Lake City, I'm not gonna see them.

 

So, we called Salt Lake. The people at the family history library were very friendly, but not helpful in the least. At first they didn't seem to understand the problem. They thought we needed help to order the film. Then they thought we needed help to find the film number. Then they thought maybe they could transfer us to some other department for help. The second department couldn't figure out our problem either and wondered why we were transferred there in the first place. An hour on the phone, remote computer support, and still no one could just take ten minutes, find the film, take a photo of it and e-mail it to us.

 

As a last resort, we e-mailed Fiji. The Fiji Archives were very helpful and nice. They found the info and returned our e-mail in less than a day. All we needed was a family member to pay the 60 cent finding fee and they'd e-mail us a copy. So, an uncle visited the archives and paid the fee for us.

 

Long story short, we now have the immigration pass for Ramdai, Parbhu's wife!

 

 

Mata Din's marriage record

After having been 'backordered' for months, I finally got the Indian marriage records for 1952. It took going through the entire roll of microfilm to get to the one I wanted. I didn't know the exact date of marriage, so I had to look at every record. Most were in English, but some were in Urdu, some in Hindi, and a few in what I think was Tamil. But, finally, the 7th record from the end of the roll, I found the one I was looking for.

This is the marriage record of Mata Din and Suruj Pati. They were married on the 1st of November 1952 in Nasinu, Suva, Fiji.

One interesting thing I noticed about this certificate was that splotch at the bottom. Apparently Suruj didn't know how to write, so she gave her thumb print instead of a signature. Probably pretty typical for a poor daughter of a sugar cane farmer.

 

Know India

India has a program called Know India Programme, that invites youth diaspora to come to India and learn about it. It is a 3 weeks program that teaches the kids (mostly college students) about Indian culture, economics, politics, science and technology and other industries. It's a great program for people of Indian origin to connect with their roots as well as other diaspora from all over the world.

This year Fiji is sending 19 youths. They will spend time visiting major historical and tourist sites, as well as meeting with political and business leaders.

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=255894
http://thejetnewspaper.com/2014/01/02/27th-know-india-programme-participation-from-fiji/

Old Maps of Northern India

With the finding of the emigration pass from India to Fiji, we now know the village/town that one great-grandfather is from. The name is Domariyaganj, then from there is a smaller village of Prasahwa. On these maps, from the 1800's you can see Basti (or Bustee), and Domariyaganj (with various spellings). Also, in his travels my husband has met other Indians, one of whom is from that area and may know someone in those villages who can find out some info for us.
Enjoy the maps! (click to view larger)



1777 map of northern India, with area highlighted

close-up from map above

Immigration Pass!

When Indians came to Fiji, they were each issued an immigration pass. The LDS church has microfilmed them, but for some reason (unknown to apparently everyone who works there) they don't loan out those particular microfilms to local family history centers.
So, I have been putting my husband to work contacting family members to get more genealogy information. And, one of his cousins happens to be visiting India right now. This cousin also happens to have a photo of one of the immigration records as well as several birth certificates and marriage certificates. So, now we have a copy too.
Yay! Happy dance!
Great grandfather Parbhu Lal came from the Basti region of India in 1908, and here is his immigration record. He was 14 years old, and from the village of Prasahwa.

I'm Not Alone

A quick search around the Fiji Times, and I came across a small group of articles from the past few months about people tracing their ancestry. It looks like I'm not the only one taking an interest in family history and Fiji.

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=251825

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=245807

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=246425

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=251618

Happy Diwali !

and wishing you a wonderful holiday season and joyous year to come

Or So The Story Goes

In my inquiries to my husband and his family for more information, I have gotten a few interesting stories, and even fewer hard facts. One of the stories is about his Grandfather.
The story goes like this...
He is born in India (around 1900), gets married and has kids. All that normal stuff. Then somewhere along the way in the (late?) 1940's he gets accused of killing someone. We don't know if he really did or not, we think not. Instead of going directly to jail, he leaves his wife and kids and goes to Fiji to work on the sugar plantations. He keeps in touch with them a little over the next few years, but contact stops after a while.
In Fiji he meets a nice young girl, gets married and has another child (1950s). Polygamist? Yup. A few years later the young mom goes crazy (certifiably) and he takes care of the child with help from friends. Then when the child is a young teen he (the dad) dies (late 1960s?). She gets raised by aunties and uncles (family friends, not blood relations).
And what of the first wife and those kids in India? It is told they immigrated to England.
So, there is a chance that we have (half) aunts, uncles and/or cousins (of various degrees of separation) living in the UK.
Or so the story goes...