Hi Gary, I used the search engine at ancestry.com. I've looked a little harder given your comments about the number of departures... I assumed I might find children of convicts - the convicts themselves having obviously been born elsewhere. While there is overlap, and transcription errors, here are some of the hits Australia: 54 (as a parish town) and 258 (as a country) New South: 269 Sydney: 202 Sidney: 167 vdl: 1 van: 160 Couldn't find any hits for Norfolk Island though.... but perhaps not surprising given the prevalence of the work in England. Place names like Rose Hill, Parramatta, Brickfield, Botany, Jackson gave hits, but nowhere related to Australia. In terms of birth dates, most are 1830'2 and 1840's. I looked for any 1700's briths and found quite a few, mostly females their names may have changed through marriage etc.. Three examples: Enathan Rawlins, 67, born abt 1784 (!), Sydney Cove Mary Ann Dunbar, 54, born abt 1797, New South Wales Sidney, a widow and pauper William Kent, 51, born abt 1800, New S Wales, formerly Royal Navy 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? cheers matt Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:20:05 +1100 > From: Gary Luke <gary@feraltek.com.au> > Subject: Re: [PJ] Former Convict Departures > To: aus-pt-jackson-convicts@rootsweb.com > Message-ID: <20090215012645.5E2A22BB994@hosted03.westnet.com.au> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > Matt > > >A brief search of the 1851 England census reveals that there are 270 > people > >who gave their palce of birth as Australia, and while there is some > overlap, > >220 or so stated Sydney as their place of birth. I found VDL and NSW > >difficult so search as place names given the variations. > > For the whole of England that's not as many as I would have expected. > By 1851 there would have been a few thousand adults with children who > returned to England - pardoned emancipist families, free settlers, > children sent back for education, military families. Lesley's > "Leaving the Colony" list has over 2,000 unique names between 1803 & > 1811, some with multiple departures, and not all heading back to > England. Some number would have been 'boomerangs' on a visit & return > for trade or other reasons. But that's only an eight year time-frame, > and 1851 covers another two generations. > > > Where did you search for this? > > > Gary > > >