Australia Cemetery Index, 1808-2007

This data collection contains tombstone transcriptions from several cemeteries in Australia. Information collected from burial registers or funeral records was sometimes also used. The entire collection covers deaths from 1808-2007. However, years covered for each area/cemetery will vary. This database is a conglomeration of several different sources. Records were primarily compiled by local family history groups or societies. Sometimes these were provided to Ancestry already in an electronic format. In these cases, there are no images associated with the records. Others were provided in book or film format and left for Ancestry to digitize. In these cases, images of the book or compiled source are associated with the records. Electoral rolls began being compiled for some areas of Australia in the 1840s. At that time only property owners were eligible to vote. In most of the colonies, all men were granted voting rights by the 1850s. Half a century later, women were granted voting rights as well. Non-British subjects were not allowed to vote until the 1940s and aborigines until 1949. Therefore, individuals falling into these two categories are not presently included in this database. Within each state, voters were organized into electoral districts and subdistricts according to where they lived. Electoral rolls were compiled according to these geographical divisions. The boundaries of districts and subdistricts could change throughout the years. Electoral rolls are great records to use as ‘census substitutes’. They are useful when census records are either not complete or non-existent, and are usually available in between census years. Because electoral rolls were published on a fairly consistent basis and are generally country-wide, they are useful for tracking individuals over time and place.