Gold rush miners licences

[ninatoo]

Hi all,

I am helping a friend with her family tree, and her ancestor came to Australia in the early 1850's and set up house in Streatham, Victoria, which seems to have been on the way to the goldfields, being not far from Ararat and Ballarat. We know a lot about the family, ie: most of the Scottish details plus their immigration, children and including the fact that he died in 1860.

I am wondering if he came out originally to mine gold, as did a lot of immigrants at that time, or if he went straight into business as a store keeper (which probably netted him a respectable income from travellers to and from the goldfields).

So...since I have not done any research to do with Australia, I thought I would ask here how I could go about trying to find out whether he did try his hand at mining. Is there a gold miners licence index anywhere? Or some other records I could search? Really green at searching Australian things....though I did have a bit of a search on the internet and also this site and couldn't find an answer.

Nina

[Currie]

Hello Nina,

Can’t say I’ve done much work researching miners.

This page from the Ballarat & District Genealogical Society is an interesting read and includes problems and suggestions in relation to Gold miner research. Check out some of the links on various parts of the site http://www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au/art/research.htm

Search for a mention of his name in the following:

The Victoria Government Gazette http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/

The State Library of Victoria http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_libr ... Login=true

The Public Record Office Victoria http://www.access.prov.vic.gov.au/publi ... ide023.jsp

The Australian newspaper site. The Melbourne Argus 1846 – 1954 will be included. This is a work in progress but there is some early stuff there now. http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home

Cora Num’s web site is worth a look to get idea where to search for different things although I can’t see much there about Gold Miners http://www.coraweb.com.au/

Hope that helps a bit,
Alan

[ninatoo]

Thanks Alan,

I will have a look a bit later and let you know how I get on...I'm in the middle of trying to get a section of my family tree ready to print.

Nina

[ninatoo]

I had a look at the pages Alan, and thanks for taking the time to list them for me. The most useful was the first, explaining why it is difficult to find out of an ancestor was in fact a god miner. I will advise my friend to take herself on a holiday to Streatham and Ballarat and check out the museums. I wish I had the luxury of doing that...sadly all my record repositories will be in Scotland, hehe! My X and I did that once, before I was doing any genealogy, but we knew enough of his side to find records for a relative of his who had been a policeman and a toll keeper in a small Victorian town in the early days.