Dangerous Ground or Rich New Research Methods? Using Digital Genealogy to Trace Colonial Mobility

Abstract

More than 3,000 emigrants took up the New Zealand Company's offer of a free or assisted passage to Nelson, the company's Second Colony of New Zealand, from 1841 to 1844 – but did they stay? This article outlines an academic project that combines genealogy techniques and sources with more conventional research, in order to reveal new information about colonial migrants who are often ‘invisible’ in historical accounts. These were predominantly poor English families (with some Germans, Scots and Irish), and they were part of the earliest stages of British colonisation of New Zealand. Genealogy websites such as Ancestry and FamilySearch proved to be central to this research. They provided a gateway to an astonishing amount of information that could ‘locate’ an individual or family, tying them to a certain place, without the researcher knowing which place to look for. This project highlights some of the limitations and dangers of using genealogy methods and sources in academic research – as well as what might be gained. The results suggest that this kind of hybrid methodology incorporating genealogy research can be used successfully within an academic study. In this project, the intricacies of colonial family networks were illuminated, even though the subjects were poor and continued to move around. Surprisingly high levels of mobility were identified, and this was true of women and children as well as men. These findings suggests that using genealogy to trace patterns of colonial mobility is not only important to gain an understanding of individual lives but may also contribute significantly to a better understanding of the larger processes of migration, colonisation and the history of colonial ‘places’.