by

K. Chetty

Guidelines for tracing ones roots

Roots Projects and family histories

Sample Family Tree with Documents............ Blank Tree editable

Indentured Indians

Approximately 152,184 indentured Indians arrived under the scheme of indenture making a total of 384 trips. The first ship the Truro arrived on 16 November 1860 and the last ship, the Umlazi arrived on 11 July 1911, marking the end of the notorious system of indenture. The ports of Madras and Calcutta served as the points of embarkation. The area indentured Indians came from, their caste, employers and places of employment, indenture number, name, fathers name, age and sex are given with each entry. To facilitate search for these details, the ships are grouped into 14 segments (below) with starting and ending numbers. If one knows the indenture number then the details of the specific ship can be found by selecting one of the files below.

PRINTABLE SHIPSLIST (Most Important files that can be printed)

Below are 9 xl Shiplist files with documents and research projects attached (columns P onwards). So please submit documents for inclusion in these files via email.

List 1 : Indenture nos. 1-15000

List 2 : Indenture nos. 15001-30000

List 3 : Indenture nos. 30001-49999

List 4 : Indenture nos. 50000-65000

List 5 : Indenture nos. 65001-80000

List 6 : Indenture nos. 80001-10000

List 7 : Indenture nos. 100001-115000

List 8 : Indenture nos. 115001-130000

List 9 : Indenture nos. 130001-152184

Use this link to find passenger Indians : South African Indian Whos Who,

Use this Link for biography on Dravidians (Tamils and Telugus) ; Naidoo, BR : Our glorious heritage, a dravidian experience

Use this link to find biography on ealry educators : Natal Indian Teacher's Society Silver Jubilee 1925-50

Research Report - Bhana, S : Indentured Indians In Natal : a study based on ships list

Here is a list of books and references on the indenture system available at the Documentation Centre.

Here is a List with starting/ending numbers and associated year of arrival
1-10753	52066-62221	109886-123105
10754-22244	62222-74589	123106-135599
22245-32350	74590-86403	135600-148402
32351-40635	86404-98058	148403-152184
40636-52065	98059-109885