How The Indiaman Magazine can help you trace your family history!

My story is possibly similar to yours and you will be pleased to learn that it is similar to many other people whose familes were in India between 1600 and 1947. However, when I first began researching my family history in British-India, there were no British-India family history societies to join and ask for help. There was no Internet. There were no genealogical magazines available, and there were certainly no magazines about the British in India available anywhere to help me make rapid progress with my research. When I started out it was a purely solitary affair and it took me 23 years to trace my family's origins back to the UK!

Today, it is now possible to make rapid progress tracing your family history in British-India within months, and it is no longer a solitary affair with The Indiaman Magazine. Within the pages of The Indiaman Magazine you will be introduced to a community of individuals in 25 countries around the world, who, like yourself are tracing their family history in British-India too! Some of them may even be related to you!

The first step!

It was a copy of my paternal grandfather's birth/baptism certificate, dated 1877, that was to set me off on my 39 year genealogical voyage of discovery, and my love affair with India. This fragile document, I soon discovered, was the only documentary evidence that my family possessed relating to my paternal family's origins.

I remember feeling frustrated as I looked at that baptism certificate, because behind the two names of my great grandparents lay a whole lifetime of memories and experiences that were completely lost to us, and I desperately wanted to know more about them!

If, like me, you have faced, or are facing a similar situation, where documentary evidence within the family is scarce, non-existent, or even very jealously guarded, then;

Believe me, you are not alone!

I have sat where you are now, tingling with excitement at finding a record, photograph or newspaper clipping that provides you with a clue to your family's origins. That feeling is mixed with one of sheer frustration, bewilderment and lots of head scratching;

How do you progress back in time with the information that you have?

Well, my aim initially, was simply to try and discover whether I had an ancestor who fought at the Battle of Waterloo. Like most young boys aged 10, I was fascinated by soldiers and battles, and the most famous battle of all, was Waterloo.

My search for a soldier took me, not on a journey to Waterloo, as I had hoped, but back in time from 20th century England to 18th century India!

My family, possibly like yours, had left India in 1948 for England following Indian Independence. I grew up in Sheffield, England, hearing wonderful stories about my family's life and experiences there and soaked them all up like a sponge!
Looking out across the smoky and polluted skyline of 1960s industrial Sheffield I used to wonder at my young age;

What the hell were we doing in England, if life in India had been so good!

My older brother and sisters would take great delight in telling me about the ponies they used to own and ride; Or the hunting trips they went on with my father on the back of an elephant! I had never seen a real elephant let alone ride on the back of one!

They, and my parents also used to tell me about the joy of travelling up to their boarding schools on the trains.

Imagine looking out of your classroom window, across the Himalayas at Mount Everest, that was the view that my mother enjoyed from her school in Naini Tal!

It was a bit different to the view of the grey and drab housing estate that I enjoyed from my classroom window in England!

The black and white photographs of my ancestors sitting under tall trees or outside their big houses with their servants in attendance or in uniform became a fascinating and colourful world to me.

Large trunks brought from India by my parents full of old photographs and letters were piled up in our damp and dirty cellar and I spent many happy hours as a boy of 10 rummaging about in those trunks looking for pieces of information or even a family tree to see where my family actually came from in the UK. I can still smell the mothballs when I think about that time!

Discarded in those trunks were only small pieces of information about my family's life in British-India and it was like assembling a jigsaw without a picture for reference!

23 years later I had traced EVERY BRANCH of my family back to the UK from India and Burma, and 33 years later I eventually found a great great great grandfather who at the age of 19 had actually fought at Waterloo with the Royal Artillery Horse Drivers!
To discover all of this I had to trace my family's records, not through England, but through India first! I travelled back in time from Indian Independence to the days of the East India Company.

I discovered ancestors who fought the colonial wars of the Honourable East India Company and the British Crown.

I discovered ancestors who had worked in the Opium Factories in Patna and Ghazipur overseeing the production of Opium that was to be shipped to China, and this substance was the cause of the Opium Wars between Britain and China!

I discovered ancestors who built the railway system across India, and Burma, and others who were Station Masters, and others who drove the trains across the Sub-Continent.

I discovered a great great grandfather who had fought in the major battles of the Sikh Wars and who later, thankfully survived the Indian Mutiny along with his pregnant wife, when his regiment, the 46th Bengal Native Infantry mutinied on July 9th 1857 in Sealkote along with the 9th Bengal Light Cavalry, slaughtering many of their European officers, their wives and children. Their unborn child was my great grandfather!

I discovered ancestors who had suffered and died from tropical diseases. Even in the 20th century, my own father nearly died of Smallpox as a baby in India.

When I look at my family history in British-India today, I am truly amazed that I exist at all! And you will be too!

I have 37 years experience and knowledge researching the history of British-India and I have faced every genealogical setback that you will also possibly face if you continue to work alone tracing your family tree in British-India.

I have helped TV and radio stations with research into British-India over the years. I have also written numerous articles about British-India, genealogy and history for various magazines over the years including Burke's Peerage online journal, and I have also been featured in the newspapers covering local history issues.

In October 2007 I helped with research into the BBC's popular celebrity genealogical programme, "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" for the impersonator, Alistair McGowan, whose ancestry was traced back to 18th century India.

In an attempt to help people make rapid progress tracing their family trees in British-India I published The Indiaman Magazine in 1996. This is still the only genealogical and history magazine IN THE WORLD for people like you and I who are lucky enough to have had British ancestors in India and Southern Asia. The Indiaman Magazine is for people who are interested in their genealogy and who don't just want to simply compile a list of names and dates!

The Indiaman Magazine is for people who want to put "meat on the bones" of their ancestors!

Since 1996 when I first published The Indiaman Magazine we have helped several hundred people around the world to trace the records of their ancestors, and we've helped them to write the history of their family in British-India too.

Click the Order button below and allow us to help you also.

We can help you find your ancestor's records!

Best wishes
Paul Rowland. Editor,

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March 2010 (57 pages)

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