This week, Findmypast has added three British Home Children record sets to its collection.
In partnership with Home Children Canada and Library and Archives Canada, Findmypast is publishing an ever-growing collection of Home Children records.
If you have a Home Child in your family tree, you may find their name within all-new enlistment and military death records, burial records, or the Hazelbrae Barnardo Home Index.
Source: Library and Archives Canada.
Over 130,000 children were sent to live overseas by the British government between the 1860s and the 1970s. Care homes, the church, local authorities and philanthropic organizations rallied behind the scheme, whereby children as young as two years old were sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as a way of solving England’s “juvenile vagrancy” problem.
Today, more than four million people worldwide are descended from a Home Child.
Free-to-access records
If you have a Home Child within your family tree, these free-to-access records may help you to uncover their story.
Home Children Burial Index
This new index, created in partnership with Home Children Canada, includes burial information for over 7,000 Home Children.
Home Children Enlistments and Military Deaths
This brand-new collection tells the story of Home Children who went on to enlist in armed forces across the Commonwealth between the 1890s and the 1950s.
Containing records from the Anglo-Boer War, both World Wars and the Korean War, this set provides a comprehensive and transnational account of Home Children’s involvement in military conflicts over a 60-year period. These 6,653 records are transcription-only.
Home Children Hazelbrae Barnardo Home Index, 1883-1923
These 9,050 new records document Home Children who were received at the Hazelbrae Barnardo Home in Ontario between 1883 and 1923. In conjunction with the Canadian Home Children Immigration Records Index, Inspection Reports, Board of Guardian records and these indexes from Bethany Children’s Homes in Pennsylvania, this new record set tells the story of each child’s migration to an unfamiliar land.
To mark Canada Day on July 1, Findmypast’s Jen Baldwin was joined by Lori Oschefski of Home Children Canada in a one-hour video on YouTube to discuss all things about Home Children.
