This is a brief guide to help you find records of someone who emigrated from Britain. The best place to look is in the archives of the destination country, as there are relatively few records of people leaving Britain.
There are many references in documents in The National Archives to people emigrating to other countries, but no single index of names. Most of our records are about emigration as a subject rather than about particular emigrants.
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What do I need to know before I start?
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Try to find out:
- the name and date of birth of the person who emigrated
- the name of the ship they travelled on
- the ports of departure and/or arrival
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What records can I see online?
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Outward passenger lists (1890-1960)
Search the Ancestorsonboard (£There may be a charge for accessing this information. Searching indexes may be free.) website for lists of passengers leaving from UK and Irish ports and travelling to places such as the USA, Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia.
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What records can I find at The National Archives at Kew?
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Emigration original correspondence and entry books (1814-1871)
Browse Discovery, our cataloguea search tool with descriptions of 11 million documents from the UK central government, law courts, and other national bodies, in CO 384 and CO 385 for information about settlers or people intending to settle in British North America, Australasia, the West Indies and other places.
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Land and Emigration Commission papers (1840-1894)
Browse our catalogue in CO 386 for correspondence, entry books and registers of the Agent General for Emigration, the South Australian Commissioners and the Land and Emigration Commission. The series includes registers of births and deaths of emigrants at sea from 1854 to 1869, lists of ships chartered from 1847 to 1875, and registers of surgeons appointed from 1854 to 1894.
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Records of the Children's Overseas Reception Board (1940-1959)
Search our Catalogue (DO 131) by name for case histories of all the CORB children evacuated overseas during the Second World War.
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To access these records you will either need to visit us, commission research (£there will be a charge) or, where you can identify a specific record referencea unique set of letters and numbers identifying a document in The National Archives, order a copy (£there will be a charge).
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What records can I find in other archives and organisations?
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Passenger lists and records in overseas libraries and archives
Contact libraries, archives and other organisations in the country to which the person travelled - many have copies of original material. Major ones to try are the Library of Congress, Washington, the US National Archives and Records Administration, the Ellis Island Foundation, New York, Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, the National Library of Australia, Canberra, the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Archives New Zealand, and the National Archives of Ireland.
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What other resources will help me find information?
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Books
Read Migration Records by Roger Kershaw (The National Archives, 2009).
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Websites
Look at the Ship's List website for information about passenger lists to Canada, USA, Australia and even some for South Africa, as well as immigration reports and newspaper records.
Find information about British emigrants to Argentina and Uruguay in the 19th and 20th century at argbrit.org.
Find information about child migrants sent from Britain to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries from the 1860s-1960s using the On Their Own website.
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Passengers
Transportees
Tracing living people