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2018-07-12
This website documents around 24,000 convicts researched from birth to death (where possible) for the Founders & Survivors Ships Project, conducted by over sixty volunteers and university researchers, and funded by the Australian Research Council.
It is a research database, so it is not very user friendly, but click on any highlighted link — you never know where that may lead you!
Go to Search for a Convict and the results will be all the possible variations for that name.
At the top of that page there is a tab — Ships — which takes you to ALL the convict ships to Van Diemen's Land in chronological order of arrival, and with all the sources. Scroll down to the list of convicts. Try all hot links. All convicts have summaries of their indent and descriptive data from the convict records, but the 124 ships that are fully researched will contain biographical material from before and after sentence.
And remember that the convict records reproduce Scottish and Irish names differently from current usage: therefore Calman, Mc, Janet or Brien O', Joseph.
This database is better for male convicts. For female convicts, your first port of call should be the Female Convicts Research Centre.
Explore and enjoy and perhaps one day we will be able to have an interactive website again where people can enter new data and we can correct mistakes.
— Janet McCalman
Thanks to Sandra Silcot and Claudine Chionh for the database architecture, and to all the volunteers and trainers.
Recent News
[Founders and Survivors] Founders and Survivors Project: The next phase
Dear Founders & Survivors followers and members,
We are now moving on to our new project, "Diggers to Veterans: Risk,
resilience and recovery in the first AIF' and are seeking two teams of
volunteers:
1) genealogists-history volunteers to work online researching the lives and
military service of one in four of the men who enlisted in Victoria and
served in World War 1. This work will involve Ancestry, TROVE, digitised
military service records from the National Archives and unit diaries from the
Australian War Memorial.
Founders and Survivors Newsletter No.18 December 2014
The final Chainletter for 2014 provides an update on the Convicts and Diggers project by Rebecca Kippen; a report by Janet McCalman on a new ARC funded project on the First AIF; an article by Jenny Wells on Thomas Bock, the first in a new series of articles on convict artists; and a call for volunteers for First AIF.
Wishing all our Founders & Survivors Community a Happy Christmas and may we see you all in 2015 as we embark on a new journey with the AIF.
Founders and Survivors Newsletter, No.17, September 2014
This is the second Chainletter for 2014. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart reports on the new grants from the Australian Research Council Linkage Scheme. Rebecca Kippen gives an update on the progress of the Convicts to Diggers project, providing some interesting early results. An edited version of the public lecture delivered at the University of Edinburgh in March by Janet McCalman is provided. Tony Stagg reflects on some of the more dramatic workplace deaths he has found while transcribing for Rebecca Kippen.
Founders and Survivors Newsletter, No.16, May 2014
This is the first Chainletter for 2014. Rebecca Kippen gives an update on Convicts & Diggers; Hamish Maxwell-Stewart reports on his new projects in the United Kingdom; Lucy Frost recounts the history of the Female Convicts Research Centre; Trudy Cowley explains about the new home for the Female Convicts in Van Diemen's Land database; Janet McCalman reports on a five-week tour of European research; and Colette McAlpine describes Hobart in the 1830s.
Happy Reading!
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