• A letter to the High Commission prompted an online experiment that revealed one family’s hand-written census records going back to the middle of the 19th Century.

The remarkable thing was that it took one day, one computer and one amateur sleuth with no prior experience in genealogy.

In July 2008, the High Commission received a letter from Queensland. In his letter, Mr Glen Morgan explained he was a ward of the state as a young boy so clues to his British ancestry were understandably hard to come by. All he had from the UK was his father’s birth certificate from the General Register Office in England.

High Commission staff don't research individual family histories but the public affairs team decided to try out an online tracing service and see what amateur sleuths could uncover.

“I had no experience in this but that was probably a good thing. If I can get it to work, there’s hope for anyone with a computer,” said Clive Hunton from the High Commission’s public affairs team.

“All I had to go on was a birth certificate from 1908 showing Mr Morgan’s father’s name, his grandfather and grandmother’s name, the grandfather’s occupation – cab driver – and their address in Fulham, south west London.

“We quickly traced one branch of Mr Morgan’s ancestry back to his great-great-great grandfather in 1781 – before the French Revolution. We also had hand-written census records from 1841 to 1901 listing trades and addresses as well as references to birth, marriage and death certificates.”

The source was a website that publishes personal records of up to 800 million names from the 19th and 20th Centuries. This information mixed with ‘old-fashioned’ googling gave a better picture of the family’s life in Fulham.

“The trail of history is not handed on a plate – there’s detective work and hunches leading eventually to hard evidence. At least one of the census collectors made clerical mistakes so you have to watch out for that sort of thing too,” said Clive Hunton.

“Some of it made me laugh. The census records for the rich areas had the best handwriting. So either the dodgy writers got the dodgy streets or they were just in a hurry to get out of there!”

The 1901 Census revealed a cab driver called Edwin A Morgan living with his mother, Maria, at Dowell Mews in the parish of St Andrew. The name, age, occupation and proximity all pointed to this Edwin Morgan being the grandfather.

But Dowell Mews no longer exists so the first challenge was to find out where it was. An internet search revealed a hand-written journal by Charles Booth who compiled a Poverty Map of London in 1898 now held by the London School of Economics Library. The journal referred to “Dowell Mews lb” followed by “cab renters”. It seemed “lb” was short for light blue which denoted a poor area where people lived on around 18 shillings a week. So far so good but the map that went with Booth’s journal did not include Dowell Mews by name, so where was it?

Alongside Dowell Mews in Booth’s journal were Jervis Rd, Mulgrave Rd, Kenneth Rd and Lillie Rd – some of which still exist today. On Booth’s map, there were only two areas shaded light blue near Mulgrave Rd and only one of them was inside the parish of St Andrew's, so that must have been where Dowell Mews stood. Aerial photographs show the cabbies’ dwellings have since been demolished. Modern offices are there today.

The second puzzle was to work out how the Illidge family from Staffordshire came to meet the Morgans of London in the 19th Century. A hand-written page from the 1861 census provided the answer. Warehouseman Robert Illidge had moved his family, including 12-year-old Maria, to Southwark in London. A Mr James Morgan who fitted the profile had been born in Southwark a few years earlier so James and Maria must have met there and married. James Morgan must have died before 1901 because Maria’s entry in the census said she was widowed and head of the family.

According to the 1871 census, a James E Morgan (who it’s believed was Glen Morgan’s grandfather’s brother) lived as a baby with his grandparents back in Staffordshire where Robert Illidge had returned from London to work as a sugar refiner at the Victoria Sugar Refinery in Newcastle-under-Lyme. There was no sign of Maria living in Staffordshire in the 1871 census, so she must have stayed in London with her husband.

The source for much of this personal history came from ancestry.co.uk with original documents from the National Archives in England. The UK service is available on a 14-day trial. Thereafter the cost is £83 a year.

There are more online services such as ancestorsonboard.com where people can trace passenger records from the UK to Australia. Images of signup papers from the First World War are also available. Museum Victoria's Immigration Discovery Centre is another valuable resource for family history. So too is the Family Historians section of the National Library of Australia's website.

Clive Hunton says there are limitations especially if you want to trace living relatives who share common ancestors. “Going back in time through the records is easier than going forwards because the UK's online census records stop at 1901 and the references to birth certificates don’t give much away.”

“For me, it was a fascinating jigsaw puzzle. We can’t do it for everyone but we can urge others to give it a try. And unless I’ve made mistakes, one family has a better understanding of its heritage.”

The British High Commission is grateful to Mr Glen Morgan for his kind permission to publish details of his family’s history. We are also grateful to the National Archives of Australia, the Immigration Museum at Museum Victoria and the London School of Economics Library for publishing the Booth Archive.

The photograph of immigrants disembarking in Australia in 1921 is published courtesy of the National Archives of Australia A12111: 2/1921/4A/1

The British High Commission makes no general comment about the overall usefulness of any online tracing service and the description on this page reflects one personal - very positive - experience.