Founders & Survivors is a partnership between historians, genealogists, demographers and population health researchers. It seeks to record and study the founding population of 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania. Many survived their convict experience and went on to help build a new society. By examining birth, death and marriage records and other historical sources, the project will produce the means of analyzing the health and welfare of Australians over the past 200 years.
By linking information about transported convicts to birth, death and marriage records for 19th century Tasmania, the project can create one of the richest pre-20th century sources of information for a population that can be followed from cradle to grave.
By linking information about transported convicts to birth, death and marriage records for 19th century Tasmania, the project can create one of the richest pre-20th century sources of information for a population that can be followed from cradle to grave.
“We will use this to study the effect that punishment, nutrition and other environmental circumstances had on life expectancy and we can do this not just for the convicts but for their children as well,” said Professor Maxwell-Stewart. The project has captured 1,000,000 lines of data relating to people who lived in 19th century Tasmania.
You can read more at http://goo.gl/kP7Su and at http://goo.gl/8EmXS. You can also search for a convict and read the transcriptions of his/her records at http://goo.gl/8EmXS.
My thanks to newsletter reader Fran Inkster for telling me about this huge project.
