At 03:47 AM 16/02/2009, you wrote: Matt >Another point of interest are that there are quite a few in the US 1850 >census with the birth place 'Sydney' or 'Australia' (just had a quick look) >- and several easily tied back to NSW BDM records. > >If people think this is worth indexing let me know, as i've been looking for >a project and this looks like a doozy. Likewise, has this already been >performed? I reckon you've discovered a fresh resource. I'm doing research into the earliest Jewish convicts, many of whom had family connections spread across the Anglo-sphere - England, Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, India & West Indies. Some of these convicts and their free settler relations shifted around a bit. In my research I haven't come across any lists like this or formal studies of returnees to England or migrations to America. In the 1800s there was quite a lot of movement within the big European Austrian and Ottoman empires. We think now of separate countries with border controls - they thought of it as regions within a larger empire with a common official language and similar systems of rule. The British empire wasn't one piece of land like the other empires - sea voyages made it a bit more difficult to travel within the empire. A book which treats part of it - "Australians and the Gold Rush, California and Down Under, 1849-1854", Jay Monaghan, pub 1966. Gary _________________________________ Gary Luke ~ gary@feraltek.com.au Sydney, Australia