Tasmania, Australia Genealogy

Guide to Tasmania, Australia ancestry, family history and genealogy birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, family history, and military records.

Background Information

 * Tasmania is named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who made the first reported European sighting of the island on 24 November 1642. Tasman named the island Anthony van Diemen's Land. The name was later shortened to Van Diemen's Land by the British. It was officially renamed Tasmania in honor of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856.
 * Sealers and whalers based themselves on Tasmania's islands from 1798.
 * In August 1803, a small military outpost, named Risdon, was established on the eastern shore of the Derwent River.
 * Several months later a second settlement was established with 308 convicts in Sullivans Cove. The latter settlement became known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, later shortened to Hobart.
 * A smaller colony was established at Port Dalrymple on the Tamar River in the island's north in October 1804 and several other convict-based settlements were established, including Port Arthur in the southeast and Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast.
 * Tasmania was eventually sent 75,000 convicts—-four out of every ten people transported to Australia.
 * By 1824, the colonial population had swelled to 12,600, while the island's sheep population had reached 200,000. The rapid colonization transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms.
 * Tensions between Tasmania's Aboriginal and white inhabitants rose, partly driven by increasing competition for kangaroo and other game. Violence began to spiral rapidly from the mid-1820s in what became known as the "Black War".
 * In 1832, almost all of the remnants of the Indigenous population were persuaded or forced to move to Flinders Island.
 * Van Diemen's Land, which thus far had existed as a territory within the colony of New South Wales, was proclaimed a separate colony on 3 December 1825.
 * Convict transportation to the island ceased in 1853 and the colony was renamed Tasmania in 1856.

Research Tools

 * Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tasmanian Government Website
 * Tasmanian Names Index Libraries Tasmania
 * Names Index records included
 * Tasmania Archives Online
 * Colonial Tasmanian Family Links Database: