Databases and Indexes

Further details of many of these database indexes may be available through the Geelong Family History Group.

Make sure you look at the two Research Options on their website and most importantly follow the link to the GFHG Research Files Catalogue List to check for these or many more indexes and documents.

• Geelong Advertiser 14 May 1859 - advertisement re the Ayrshire emigrants who arrived on the ship Queen of the East at Melbourne in 1854
• available at Geelong Heritage Centre, Geelong
  Deakin University, Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library, Waterfront Campus, Geelong
  State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
  and various other locations on microfilm

• NAME: Name of emigrant
• DATE: 17-18 Sep 1854 [date of arrival]
• PLACE: Melbourne [arrival port of the ship Queen of the East]
• COMMENT: Age of emigrant
• REFERENCE DETAIL: Geelong Advertiser 14 May 1859 [date of advertisement]

• 94 entries

THE AYRSHIRE EMIGRANTS OF 1854

In the Year 1854, 94 persons (whose names are given below), emigrated from Girvan, in Ayrshire, to the colony of Victoria, by the ship the Queen of the East.  They were enabled so to do by means of the Family Colonial Emigration Society (of which Mr Parker was the Secretary), and the necessary funds were provided by Miss Burdett Coutts through that Society.  Each of the emigrants undertook to repay the sum advanced to him or her.

It is requested that any of the emigrants who have repaid the money advanced to them, or any part of it will give the following information:-

What they have repaid?
When they repaid it?
To whom they repaid it?

And, further, those who have made no repayment, and who are now in improved circumstances, are earnestly requested now to fulfil their engagement.  They are reminded that the money was advanced with the intention that on its repayment it should again be employed for emigration purposes, and in extending to others of their fellow-countrymen benefits similar to those which they themselves have received.  Any information relating to those emigrants may be communicated to

WM. BURROW, Mayor of Geelong,
Or, to
WILLIAM JAMES FARRER,
Solicitor to Miss Burdett Coutts

66, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, Jan. 15, 1859

THE NAMES OF THE PERSONS ASSISTED:- [included in the database]

NOTE: This advertisement appeared in the Port Phillip Herald and the Geelong Advertiser, and possibly other newspapers, on 14 May 1859 [almost five years after the arrival of the emigrants].

Girvan, the home of the emigrants, is located south Ayrshire on the west coast of Scotland.  The nearest major port of departure was Liverpool, then in Lancashire, England.

The Queen of the East departed Liverpool on 18 Jun 1854.  It carried 1 passenger, 385 immigrant and steerage passengers, and a cargo of arsenic!