The huge and powerful British East India Company was originally formed to trade with the East Indies but at different times traded not only in India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon), but also in Hong Kong, Burma, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Its main trade was in cotton, dyes, opium, silk, tobacco, salt, saltpetre and tea but it also carried manufactured goods from Britain to sell.
Company employees, soldiers and sailors frequently took (against Company rules) small quantities of goods to trade as well. The Company eventually came to rule large areas of India and other places with its own private army and navy exercising military power and assuming administrative functions which lasted until 1858. It issued coinage in India and Malaysia.
Until 1833, people who wanted to visit India and the Company's other territories were required to observe their rules and to deposit a Bond guaranteeing their good behaviour. Traders had to sign a covenant agreeing not to undertake unapproved business. Bonds were usually to the value of £200 for a visitor and £500 or more for traders. Each bond applicant had to be recommended by two 'Sureties' (essentially referees). In the 18th and early 19th centuries, joining the East India Company was a likely route to wealth, if you survived.
The Families In British India Society have indexed the important information in some of the bonds and covenants in the British Library. There are over 3,000 bonds from 1607 to 1770 and 12,500 bonds and other documents from 1814 to 1865. It’s worth looking at this source, if there were members of your family who went to India in these periods.
Showing posts with label Families In British India Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Families In British India Society. Show all posts
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Births, Marriages and Deaths in British India
The Families In British India Society, is building a database of intimations in the Times of India newspapers. The database currently contains births, marriages and deaths from 25th July 1859 to 1909.
It took me a long time to spot the surname search for this database, so I've ringed it in red on the picture. It would be nice to be able to search it for a place or a first name as well as a surname but that's not possible, so for a common name you may have to look through a lot of entries. Search the Times of India births, marriages and deaths for yourself.
I looked for my great grandfather, Luke Golding, but he’s not listed so that suggests that although he lived there as a young boy, he wasn’t born in India.
Our latest volume, Coldingham Monumental Inscriptions is now available.
Read our Kith & Kin column every week in the Border Telegraph and Peeblesshire News newspapers.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Who Do You Think You Are with Rupert Penry-Jones
I was fascinated by the BBC programme episode shown last night (Friday evening) of Who Do You Think You Are with Rupert Penry-Jones, the actor.
It was interesting to see the part played by a medical unit in a World War II battle, and I hadn't appreciated either the size of Monte Cassino or the height at which it lies. Rupert's ancestor, William Thorne and his men, clearly saved many lives through their actions in the battle of Monte Cassino – what heroes !
More fascinating was the story that one of his ancestors was Indian.
Rupert followed the trail from his' great great grandfather, Theophilus Thorne, his marriage to Sarah Todd in 1885; Sarah's birth record; Thomas and Louisa Todd's marriage in South India in 1866; Louisa's father, Thomas Johnstone, whose name is on the Quarterly Alphabetical Nominal Rolls of the whole of the Europeans of the 1st Madras Fusiliers in 1857 - he left England in 1842. The 1st Madras Fusiliers was an East India Company regiment that ruled British colonial India until 1857. Thomas' regiment was stationed in Allahabad during the Indian Mutiny/War of Independence in 1857.
The researcher has discovered letters he wrote to his wife, Louisa - amazing that they survived and could be found. Louisa was born on 25th Feb 1832, maiden name Smith. Rupert searches on Family Search and finds two entries, follows the first one, (http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp) discovers that her mother, Susanna, was described as an Indo-Briton, born in 1817 in Nagpore; and then visits All Saints Church in Nagpore and finds a birth record relating to Susanna's mother, Elizabeth, who was fully Indian.
However, I wonder whether the researcher's looked at the second entry on the Family Search results which shows the mother as Susanna Callum, however it also shows Louisa's death in 1836. Clearly, if Louisa died at the age of 4, she can't be an ancester of Rupert. Did the researchers validly ignore this ?
Apparently the East India Company, which ran the colonial parts of India before 1858, encouraged their staff in the 17th and 18th centuries to marry Indian women to alleviate homesickness and keep the staff in India, by giving them a bonus of a pagoda coin for each birth, but by the time Louisa was born, the practice had stopped; there were also restrictions on financial assistance and employment opportunities for Indo-Britons. These pagodas were small gold coins issued in Madras and other places, worth about 3½ rupees or about 7 shillings (35p). That might not seem much today, but in the Borders in the 1840s, 7 shillings would have been half a week’s wages for a wright, or a week’s wages for a weaver; and in India it would have had much greater purchasing power.
Families In British India Society and Indiaman Magazine look like useful resources, if you can put up with the pop-ups and instant audio of the Indiaman Magazine.
To comment on this article, please click the 'comments' link below.
It was interesting to see the part played by a medical unit in a World War II battle, and I hadn't appreciated either the size of Monte Cassino or the height at which it lies. Rupert's ancestor, William Thorne and his men, clearly saved many lives through their actions in the battle of Monte Cassino – what heroes !
More fascinating was the story that one of his ancestors was Indian.
Rupert followed the trail from his' great great grandfather, Theophilus Thorne, his marriage to Sarah Todd in 1885; Sarah's birth record; Thomas and Louisa Todd's marriage in South India in 1866; Louisa's father, Thomas Johnstone, whose name is on the Quarterly Alphabetical Nominal Rolls of the whole of the Europeans of the 1st Madras Fusiliers in 1857 - he left England in 1842. The 1st Madras Fusiliers was an East India Company regiment that ruled British colonial India until 1857. Thomas' regiment was stationed in Allahabad during the Indian Mutiny/War of Independence in 1857.
The researcher has discovered letters he wrote to his wife, Louisa - amazing that they survived and could be found. Louisa was born on 25th Feb 1832, maiden name Smith. Rupert searches on Family Search and finds two entries, follows the first one, (http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp) discovers that her mother, Susanna, was described as an Indo-Briton, born in 1817 in Nagpore; and then visits All Saints Church in Nagpore and finds a birth record relating to Susanna's mother, Elizabeth, who was fully Indian.
However, I wonder whether the researcher's looked at the second entry on the Family Search results which shows the mother as Susanna Callum, however it also shows Louisa's death in 1836. Clearly, if Louisa died at the age of 4, she can't be an ancester of Rupert. Did the researchers validly ignore this ?
Apparently the East India Company, which ran the colonial parts of India before 1858, encouraged their staff in the 17th and 18th centuries to marry Indian women to alleviate homesickness and keep the staff in India, by giving them a bonus of a pagoda coin for each birth, but by the time Louisa was born, the practice had stopped; there were also restrictions on financial assistance and employment opportunities for Indo-Britons. These pagodas were small gold coins issued in Madras and other places, worth about 3½ rupees or about 7 shillings (35p). That might not seem much today, but in the Borders in the 1840s, 7 shillings would have been half a week’s wages for a wright, or a week’s wages for a weaver; and in India it would have had much greater purchasing power.
Families In British India Society and Indiaman Magazine look like useful resources, if you can put up with the pop-ups and instant audio of the Indiaman Magazine.
To comment on this article, please click the 'comments' link below.
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