Ancestry.com.au announces free access to immigration records

Ancestry.com.au announces free access to immigration and travel records

Ancestry.com.au announces free access to all immigration and travel databases from 31 August – 6 September

New Zealand, 31 August 2011 – Ancestry.com.au, New Zealand’s leading online family history resource, today announced it will provide Kiwis access to all Immigration and Travel databases free for the first time from 31 August to 6 September.

For a limited time New Zealanders can search 329 databases and more than 122 million records from the 1500s to mid-1990s to unlock the clues to their ancestor’s immigration. This open database will assist Kiwis in uncovering information about how and when their family came to land on these shores.

For those who are interested in family history but have never made the leap, now is the time to explore the links in the past that could lead to a discovery about how we got to where we are today.

The Immigration and Travel records contain information about migrant ancestors who arrived in a new country and applied for citizenship or naturalisation in their new homeland. Containing passenger arrival records, naturalisation records, border crossings, emigration records, passports and convict transportation records, the databases include records from New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Europe, United States, Canada and several other countries, ensuring that users can trace the movements of their ancestors to understand how and when they arrived where they did.

Immigrants and their descendants that feature in this collection include:

Russell Crowe’s great-grandfather Frederick William Crowe can be found, along with most of his family, emigrating from England to Canada in the early part of the 20th century. It was his third son, John Doubleday Crowe that chose New Zealand instead of Canada as his new home.

Ernest Rutherford, known as the Father of Nuclear Physics and winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the New Zealand-born ‘scientist’s scientist’ appears numerous times in the records traveling from England to Canada and crossing the border into the United States. Rutherford was Knighted in 1914.

There are many other famous names included in these records. New Zealanders can view the passport applications of Franklin Roosevelt, Howard Hughes and Walt Disney, the passenger lists of ships that reveal Oscar Wilde and Charlie Chaplin as travelers and the border crossing record of Frida Khalo.

Brad Argent, Ancestry.com.au Content Director for New Zealand and Australia, comments: “For New Zealanders who are interested in their family history but have never made the leap, this is a great opportunity to search one of the largest collections of records for free, and to make the connection between where they came from and how they got here.

New Zealanders arrived in this country from all over the world and for many different reasons. This enormous collection of records arms Kiwis with a wealth of knowledge about the past that could inform who they are today”.

The entire Immigration and Travel category is free to search from 31 August to 6 September. To begin searching, go to www.ancestry.com.au/travel.

ENDS

ABOUT ANCESTRY.COM.AU

Ancestry.com.au contains more than 965 million records in its Australian, New Zealand and UK collections, including New Zealand Naturalisations, 1843-1981, New Zealand City & Area Directories, 1866-1955, New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853-1981, New Zealand Maori Voter and Electoral Rolls, 1908 & 1919, New Zealand Canterbury Provincial Rolls, 1868-1874, New Zealand Jury Lists, 1842-1862, New Zealand, Maori Land Claims, 1858-1980, the Australia Birth, Marriage and Death Index, Australian Convict Transportation Registers, Australian Free Settlers, Australian Electoral Rolls, New South Wales SANDS Directories, as well as the most complete online collection of England, Wales and Scotland Censuses and the England and Wales Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.

Ancestry.com.au was launched in May 2006 and belongs to the global network of Ancestry websites (wholly owned by Ancestry.com Operations Inc.), which hosts seven billion records. To date, more than 26 million family trees have been created and 2.6 billion profiles and 65 million photographs and stories uploaded. (July 29, 2011)

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