Record series
German Immigrants - Estray Correspondence and Passenger Lists Immigrants
VPRS 8810
1849 - 1850
Not set
North Melbourne
Agencies
This record series was created by:
Superintendent, Port Phillip District ( VA473 ): 1849 - 1850
Agencies responsible for this record series: Date Range
Series date range: 1849 - 1850
Series in custody:
1849 - 2012
Contents in custody:
1849 - 1850
Function / Content
This series is comprised of seven estray documents (that is, documents which have at some point been removed from their official custody) relating to German immigration to the Port Phillip District in 1849.In light of the purpose and contents of the documents (see below) it is unclear how or why they came to be collected together or when they came into the custody of the Public Record Office. They have been registered as one series because they relate to the same subject matter.
The Superintendent of the Port Phillip District (VA 473) has been shown as the agency recording this series. It is probable that the passenger lists were written or collected by the Immigration Branch of the Superintendent's office. The correspondence, although written by the Superintendent, was almost certainly a part of the correspondence system of the New South Wales Colonial Secretary to whom it was sent.
Between February and April 1849 three ships arrived in Port Phillip from Hamburg, Germany, carrying between them 309 German immigrants. The immigrants' arrival initiated numerous communications between officials in Port Phillip, Sydney and London because the proprietors of the voyages claimed the bounty which the government offered for certain categories of immigrants arriving in the Port Phillip District. Such financial assistance was usually not payable for non-British immigrants unless they fell within certain approved occupational categories. Most of the German immigrants on board the three ships did not fall into these categories.
There are two types of documents in this series. There are four original letters to the New South Wales Colonial Secretary; three from the Superintendent of the Port Phillip District and one from the Agent for Immigration in Sydney. The letters all relate to the application for bounty made by the managers of the ships which transported German immigrants to Port Phillip.
Annotations on the letters indicate that they were received by the New South Wales Colonial Secretary and incorporated into the registry system of that Office (see below). It is not known when or why they were removed from the Colonial Secretary's correspondence system and returned to Victoria.
There are also three lists of German immigrants who arrived in 1849; one for each of the three ships. It seems most likely that the lists were compiled at the time the ships arrived in Port Phillip either by the ships' masters as the basis of their claim for bounty or by immigration officials in port.
The lists do not appear to be attachments to the correspondence described above, however a consolidated list of passengers on the three ships forms the attachment to one of the letters and may have been compiled from these lists.
Each list details the names of immigrants, their calling (occupation, trade or status), age, native place, religion, whether they could read and/or write and whether they were in possession of a Bible. The lists also give details of births and deaths during the voyage.
How to use the records
The series has been digitised and can be viewed online. Browse the consignment listing under "Accessing the Records" for items of interest.Please note that there is no nominal index to the three immigrant lists included in the series.
Recordkeeping system
The letters to the Colonial Secretary show evidence of their relationship to two recordkeeping systems:The three letters from the Superintendent each bear an outward letter number. The Superintendent's copies of these letters can be found in VPRS 117 Outward Letter Books, Immigration Branch (also available online), although the attachments are not included in the Letter Books.
The letters are also annotated in red with the New South Wales Colonial Secretary's inward letter number. Notes and cross-references on the documents suggest that they were originally filed together in a top-numbering system. In other words as another letter about German immigration was received and registered, related previous letters were removed from their position in the filing system and placed with the most recent one. The letters have now been placed in top-number order with the letter with the highest number (the letter last received by the Colonial Secretary's Office) on top of the bundle.
A further number, written in small figures at the top of each letter, appears to be an annual single correspondence number with the prefix 51 (representing the year 1851. The significance of these registration numbers is not known.
