Wednesday 29 January 2014

FindMyPast releases British in India records

Findmypast has added more than 2.5 million records detailing the lives of the British in India from 1698 to 1947 to its online databases. The collection, released in partnership with the British Library, offers an unrivalled opportunity to explore family history on the subcontinent and includes many Irish people.

The records cast light on the careers and family lives of expats, the significance of the East India Company, the offices of power, infant mortality, Anglo-Indian marriages, family relationships, and the lives of women in India. The details of expats’ lives and deaths are documented in a variety of records ranging from returns of baptisms, marriages and burials, civil and military pensions and wills.

The British in India collection includes:
  • British India Office birth and baptism records 1698-1947
  • British India Office deaths and burials 1749-1947
  • Indian Office wills and probate records 1749-1957
  • India Office East India Company and Civil Service pensions 1749-1947
  • East India Company cadet papers
  • Applications for the civil service
I am reliably informed (a big thank you to genealogist Joanna Fennell) that researchers with Indian connections may already have searched some of these record sets on the Families in British India Society (FIBIS) site. FIBIS has been transcribing various records from the India Office Records and various other sources in the British Library (eg. directories, memorial inscriptions) for years. FindMyPast's new collection has the advantage of having images of the original documents, and it is the first time these have been available online. Some, but not all, of the information in these records has been transcribed by FIBIS in the past. The collection of wills, for example, has never been available outside the reading room of the British Library – not even the indexes were digitised before now.

The FindMyPast collection is now available across the company's portfolio of FindMyPast.ie, FindMyPast.com; FindMyPast.com.au and FindMyPast.co.uk.