Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

FAMILY HISTORY

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

Rachel Bellerby

The Great War Handbook

Geoff Bridger

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Richard Brooks and Matthew Little

Your Rural Ancestors

Jonathan Brown

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Robert Burlison

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

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Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

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Tracing Your Ancestors

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Tracing Your Army Ancestors

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A Guide to Military History on the Internet

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Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Keith Gregson

Your Irish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Jonathan Oates

Tracing Family History on the Internet

Christopher Patton

Great War Lives

Paul Reed

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Secret Service Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

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Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

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Tracing Your Police Ancestors

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Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

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Fishing and Fishermen

Martin Wilcox

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright © Emma Jolly, 2012

ISBN 978-1-84884-573-2

PRINT ISBN 9781848845732

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The right of Emma Jolly to be identified as the author of this work has been

asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Glossary

Chronology of the British in India

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Name Your Ancestors

Geography

Online Resources

Visiting Archives

Other London Archives

Archives Elsewhere in the UK

India

Chapter 2: History of the British in India: the East India Company (EIC)

Origins of the East India Company (EIC)

High Mortality Rate

Records of Britons Resident in India

Chapter 3: Company Rule in India

Governors of India

Civil Servants

Growth of the EIC

Twilight Years of the East India Company

Chapter 4: The India Office and the Raj

1857 Indian Mutiny

The Raj and the India Office Records

Changes in Social Life

The Anglo-Indian Community

New Occupations and Their Resources

Later Directories

Growth of Empire: Expansion into Africa

Viceroys

The Amritsar Massacre and the Rise of Indian Nationalism

Burma

Chapter 5: The East India Company’s Armies, the Indian Army, the British Army in India and the Royal Indian Air Force

The East India Company’s Armies

Indian Army (IA) 1858–1947

British Army

First World War

Everyday Military Life in India 1900–47

Second World War and the Japanese Invasion of Singapore and Burma

Chapter 6: Merchants and Ships

Maritime Ancestors

Indian Navy (1830–1863) and the Royal Indian Marine/Navy (1877–1948)

Further Sources

British Merchant Seamen

Royal Navy

Records of Ships

Merchants and Trade

The Tea Trade

Travel To and From India

Chapter 7: Religion, Cemeteries and Schools

Ecclesiastical Records

Non-Anglican Records and Places of Worship

Religions in India

Conversion To and From Christianity

Missionaries and Religious Leaders

Cemeteries

Schools and Orphans

Orphan Asylums

Asylum Press

Chapter 8: Railways

History of the Railways in India

Indian Railway Companies

State Railways

Railway Companies

Other Sources for Tracing Railway Ancestors

Chapter 9: Probate Records

Probate of Those with Property in India

Accountant General’s Records British India and Burma 1774–1948

Ordering Probate Records in the British Library

Probate of Those with Property outside India

Chapter 10: Indian Independence and Life after 1947

History of the Indian Independence Movement

Partition and the Transfer of Power

Pakistan & Bangladesh; Sri Lanka

The Departure of the British from India

The Stayers-On: Records of the British in India from 1948

Tracing Relatives who have left India

Legacy

Governors & Viceroys of India

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would never have existed without the idea from Simon Fowler and his persistence in ensuring it became reality. I am very grateful to him for asking me to write it. At Pen & Sword, I am grateful to Rupert Harding for editorial support and patiently answering scores of emails; and to Pamela Covey for her editing.

Much of my research has taken place in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room at the British Library. All staff members there continue to be invaluable in their assistance, and the enquiries team, particularly, has been consistently helpful and efficient.

I should also like to acknowledge my friends and fellow genealogists, many of whom have been very supportive throughout the preparations for this book. Justine Taylor generously gave me the benefit of her extensive military history and editing expertise. Chris Paton has shown continuous support on his blog http://britishgenes.blogspot.com and kindly taken time to read and comment on several chapters.

In addition, I continue to be inspired by the individuals and families that I research, and I am fortunate that a number of clients were happy for me to reproduce parts of their family histories. I extend sincere thanks to Guy Dixon of Jersey, John Stephens, and Mike Rainey.

As a member of the wonderful FIBIS family history society, I have been greatly assisted by fellow members giving general words of encouragement, sharing family or personal memories, and allowing me to use material in this book. Special thanks go to FIBIS member and volunteer, Noel Gunther; FIBIS Webmaster, Valmay Young; FIBIS Chairman, Peter Bailey; FIBIS Trustee, Elaine MacGregor; and to Valmay’s grandmother, Betty Gascoyne, for sharing her photographs and memories.

I receive almost daily support from friends and followers on Twitter. Warm thanks are due, especially, to Jane Fleming, MatthewWard, genetic genealogist Debbie Kennett, military historian Paul Reed, and The Army Children Archive (www.archhistory.co.uk) for allowing their images and family memories to be included here. Also thanks to railway historian David Turner of http://turniprail.blogspot.com for his reading and invaluable advice.

I am grateful to Hugh Purcell who kindly allowed me to quote from his excellent book After the Raj: The Last Stayers-On and the Legacy of British India.

Thanks also to my parents, Barry and Alethea Jolly, who manfully read each early draft and gave valuable advice. And my final and biggest thanks go to my husband, Simon Causer and our children, Jacob and Oscar, for providing much-needed distraction and fun.

PREFACE

This book is aimed at anyone who is tracing British ancestors who were born, lived or worked in the Indian region between 1600 and the late twentieth century. While the official period known as British India is that of the Raj , British involvement in India largely dates from the time of the East India Company (later the British East India Company).

In 1700, the population of India was twenty times that of Britain. Despite this, British dominance in India grew to such an extent that, eventually, more than 250 million Indians were being governed by 900 British civil servants with the support of 70,000 British soldiers.¹ Britain became a global superpower in a way that would never have been possible without India, which was later described by Prime Minister Disraeli as ‘the brightest jewel of the crown’ in the British Empire. Yet there had been no grand plan for this world dominance. Instead, the Empire evolved gradually from very simple beginnings.

Today the term ‘British Indian’ or ‘British-Indian’ is used to describe British citizens who are ethnically Indian. Similar considerations apply to the citizens of modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In this book, however, the term is used to refer to the British who lived and worked in India during the time of British control. This may include Britons of Indian descent and those with ancestors from elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

The reason for this usage is that other terms are insufficient in their implication. ‘British Raj ancestors’ would limit only to those who lived between 1858 and 1947. And the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ (and its earlier form, ‘Indo-British’) has been used in different ways in different periods by different authors.

One example of this may be found in White Mughals by William Dalrymple, who refers to the children of English fathers and Indian women in the eighteenth century as ‘Anglo-Indian children’.² He also writes of ‘the burgeoning mixed-blood Anglo-Indian community’ of the 1780s and of Cornwallis’s legislation that banned ‘Anglo-Indian children of British soldiers from entering the East India Company’s army between 1786 and 1795’.³ Most dictionaries today use Anglo-Indian in this way, describing people with mixed British and Indian ancestry. Usually, the male side was British and the female side Indian, although Anglo-Indians who were born in Britain usually had Indian fathers and British mothers.

This term was used to describe people of mixed descent in the 1911 census of India and today, Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution provides this definition:

An Anglo-Indian means a person whose Father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent, but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes only.

In the past the term was also used to describe Britons who were born and raised in India (see, for example, the works of Rudyard Kipling). People of mixed descent were known as ‘Eurasians’ but the term was later used more widely to encompass anyone ofmixed European and Asian descent. The Anglo-Indian community came to include those with Portuguese, British, Indian and other European ancestry. Although Anglo-Indians were often segregated and discriminated against, they made an essential contribution to British India and are found in most British Indian records. Therefore, this book covers records relevant to Britons, Europeans and Anglo-Indians in India.

Colonial historians have written at length about negative aspects of British India. However, through the lens of family history, British India can be viewed from an impartial perspective. Throughout the centuries of British rule in India, the country saw every kind of British Indian: from the immensely wealthy and powerful, to the downtrodden and poverty-stricken; from the kind-hearted and generous, to the cruel and greedy; from the technically innovative, to the completely uneducated. It would be unhelpful to attempt to place your own British Indian ancestors in narrow categories. As you will find through your research, each British Indian was unique and made an individual contribution to his or her own world, the Empire, and India today.

Hopefully this book will help you to discover just what that individual contribution was, and how your unique British Indian ancestor affected the world in which he or she lived.

Notes

1. Niall Ferguson, Empire.

2. William Dalrymple, White Mughals, p.49.

3. Ibid., p.144.

GLOSSARY

British Library IOR Series

CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRITISH IN INDIA