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Title: View of Following through: the value of tracing British settlers across time and space

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: Many statistics about British settlers in New Zealand come from death certificates. This article suggests,then trials, a longitudinal database by linking the records of 1,860 first generation settlers. They had high levels of internal migration before leaving Britain and between 20 and 30 percent lived in another country before they arrived here. Between 12 and 19 percent of them left, though onlyafter16 years on average. But return migration was only between 5 and 8 percent, a fraction of the estimates for Australia and the United States. Rathermostmen sought greener pastures elsewhere, notably Australia.In March 1893, the Victorian Police Gazette announced: “Shederick Rawsthorne is inquired for by his daughter Florence Rawsthorne, address –General Post Office, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is said to have been at one time a resident of Gore. It is not known whether Gore is in New Zealand or Australia.”1In one way this is a trivial event: uncertain even of which country her father had emigrated to, Florence was one of many pleading for lost fathers, husbands, wives,sons, and daughters. But Shadrack’s life illustrates three key issues with our current understanding of the nineteenth-century British migration to New Zealand. Phillip and Hearn’s analysis, based on a random sample of death certificates, has provided a statistical understanding of our British setters, a group which was largely undifferentiated in the official statistics.2Whilethishas been supplemented for the Scots and Irish by genealogical records and for some local areas, most notably the Caversham project,even now our understanding of the British settler society remains largely based on death certificates.3Our reliance on death certificates means we may be missing key parts of the story, including the contribution of those who did not die here;the role of the wider British diasporain settlers’ lives; and finally, the ability to track patterns across time and space to see intra-and inter-generational impacts.This article is going to suggest,and then trial,a methodology toovercome these issues through linking the many sources of information that are now available electronically, and then use a trial database to increase our understanding of the pathways to and from New Zealand.

Url: https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/view/8330/7396

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Authors: Galt, Margaret

Periodical (Full): Journal of New Zealand Studies

Issue:

Volume: NS36

Pages: 105-123

Data Collections: IPUMS International

Topics: Methodology and Data Collection, Migration and Immigration

Countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom