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"Discover more about your family and their life in colonial British-India with The Indiaman Magazine. You will be taken on a colourful and fascinating journey through time!"

By Paul Rowland.

Founder & Editor of The Indiaman Magazine.

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, thanks to 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!

It was a copy of my paternal grandfather's birth/baptism certificate, dated 1877, that was to set me off on my 37 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.

Discover more in our free to use BMD database

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 ridden on the back of an elephant, nor was I ever likely to see one roaming the streets of Sheffield!
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, St Mary's Convent 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 military uniforms 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 fought in the Peninsula Wars with the Royal Artillery Horse Drivers. However, he did not appear in the Waterloo Medal Roll and only recently, I discovered why he did not appear in the Waterloo Medal Roll. After fighting at Salamanca, Orthes and Toulouse, his regiment was sent to Canada in 1814 to fight against the Americans in the War of 1812!

In 1815, a few months after the Battle of Waterloo, my ancestor returned to England with his regiment which was subsequently disbanded. He re-enlisted in the 11th Light Dragoons and was almost immediately sent to India with his new regiment, where he married and raised a family and ultimately died in Ghazipur.

I was dumbstruck to discover that my ancestor had not fought at Waterloo, but luckily or unluckily for me, my family had yet again managed to sidestep a possible tragedy which could so easily have resulted in an untimely death of an ancestor resulting in an abrupt end to my family tree and even my existence!

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!