New Zealand Emigration and Immigration

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New Zealand

Emigration and Immigration

New Zealand Ships

How to Find the Records

Online Records

• Passenger Listings for Vessels New Zealand Bound, Rootsweb
• 1788-1890 Admission, discharge and other records, 1788-1890, Royal Philanthropic Society, organized in 1788 "for the admission of the offspring of convicts and the reformation of criminal poor children." Emigration was encouraged, and records exist of those who went New Zealand.
• 1642-1845 Shadows of Time: Early New Zealand Settlers Each ship name is a clickable link.
• 1800-1900 New Zealand Yesteryears: Passenger Lists 1800-1900
• 1837-1921 New Zealand, Auckland Area Arrivals at MyHeritage - index ($)
• 1838-1921 Auckland area passenger arrivals 1838-1889, 1909-1921 and passenger vessels 1838-1886, index of passengers and ships.
• 1839-1973 New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
• 1839-1850 Emigration lists, 1839-1850 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only. The emigrant laborers from British Isles who received free passage to N.Z.
• 1839-1850 New Zealand Company embarkation register, 1839-1850
• 1840-- Index to assisted immigrants, ca. 1840-, at FamilySearch Catalog; index.
• 1840-1880s New Zealand, passenger lists, Canterbury provincial assisted immigrants, 1840-1880s at FamilySearch Catalog; index & images
• 1840-1927 Haylock's shipping note books from about 1840-1927 Gives information on shipping, passenger lists, log notes, shipwrecks, ship and passenger stories, etc. 12 note books mostly newspaper extracts.
• 1840-1870 General biographical index, ca. 1840-1870 at FamilySearch Catalog. The names in this index are gathered from a variety of sources, the bulk of which are ships' passenger lists or immigration records.
• 1848 1851 Passenger arrivals at Port Chalmers, New Zealand
• 1853-1885 Emigration to Canterbury : Lyttelton shipping lists, 1853-1885 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1855-1871 Passenger lists from foreign ports to Canterbury 1855-1871 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1858-1884 Cornish Emigrants to New Zealand: Passenger Lists 1858 - 1884, index
• 1861-1872 Goldrush Online Search over 70,000 records of goldminers from the goldrushes of New Zealand spanning the years 1861 to 1872. Index.
• 1862-1962 New Zealand, Auckland, Albertland Index, 1862-1962 at FamilySearch — index and images; card extracts from passenger lists for Auckland
• 1865-1879 Wellington list of immigrants, 1865-1868; depot masters' record book of arrival of immigrants 1878-1879, images
• 1871-1888 Passenger lists from British Isles to New Zealand, 1871-1888 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1871-1888 Index to government assisted immigrants, 1871-1888, at FamilySearch Catalog images
• 1872-1880 Index of immigrants, 1872-1880, at FamilySearch Catalog images
• 1872-1892 Passenger lists of vessels bringing assisted immigrants to New Zealand, 1872-1892 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1874-1877 Register of immigrants under the immigrants land act, 1873, at FamilySearch Catalog images
• 1878-1960 UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 at Ancestry - index & images ($)
• 1879-1882 Blenhein depot masters' records book of arrival of immigrants 1879-1882 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• 1883-1973 Passenger lists (New Zealand), 1883-1973 at FamilySearch Catalog; index and images
• 1883-1910 Index to Social Security shipping lists, for passengers leaving the United Kingdom, 1883-1910 Applicants for Social Security had to prove age and length of residence in New Zealand, which information was generally available in shipping lists. The Social Security Department collected those lists, which have now been indexed and are housed at the National Archives in Wellington.
• 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast - index & images ($); includes those with Destination of New Zealand
• 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 at FamilySearch; Search results for New Zealand
• 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
• Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose New Zealand under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".
• Shadows of Time Passenger Lists and Information
• Embarkation Register : indexing cards of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington
• New Zealand Bound
• Transcriptions of Births - Marriages - Deaths - Obituaries, Inquests, shipping lists etc.

Naturalizations

• 1843-1981 New Zealand, Naturalisations, 1843-1981 at Ancestry ($), index.

Cultural Groups

• Dalmatians in New Zealand A collection of family histories, passports, obituaries and other materials regarding families who immigrated to New Zealand from Dalmatia, a region in Croatia.
• 1858-1884 Cornish Emigrants to New Zealand: Passenger Lists 1858 - 1884, index

Offices and Archives to Contact

Archives New Zealand (Head Office)

Archives New Zealand
10 Mulgrave St
Wellington, New Zealand

PO Box 12050
Wellington, New Zealand
Telephone: +64 4 499 5595
Fax: +64 4 495 6210
info@archives.govt.nz

• Website
  
• Archway Archives New Zealand online catalog
• Migration Reference Guide
  

"We hold a variety of ship records, mostly in Wellington. All passenger lists held in Wellington have been digitized and are available through the FamilySearch website under ‘New Zealand Immigration Passenger Lists ’.

Passenger lists: "Card indexes have been created, from all surviving passenger lists and immigrant information held at our Wellington archive, of those assisted to New Zealand by the New Zealand Company, other colonising ventures, provincial and central governments, 1840-1880s. These card indexes are held in the Wellington Reading Room.

• General Biographical Index c1840-1880s [Bio 1]
• Assisted Immigration Scheme Index 1871-1888 [IM 15]
• Canterbury Provincial Assisted Immigrants Index
• Additionally, ships’ papers from nineteenth century voyages, especially in the 1870s, may include reports on the voyages and other information. References to these papers are also in the card indexes."

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Auckland Regional Office of Archives New Zealand

Archives New Zealand
Auckland Regional Office
95 Richard Pearse Drive
Mangere, Manukau. 2022
Auckland
New Zealand

Telephone: (64-9) 270-1100
Fax: (64-9) 276 4472
Email: auckland@archives.govt.nz
Website

Mailing address:
PO Box 201103 Auckland Airport
Manukau. 2150
New Zealand

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Finding the Town of Origin in New Zealand

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in New Zealand, see New Zealand Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

New Zealand Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country.
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration to New Zealand

• The Māori were the first people to reach New Zealand, followed by the early European settlers.
• Following colonization, immigrants were predominantly from Britain, Ireland and Australia because of restrictive policies.
• There was also significant Dutch, Dalmatian, German, and Italian immigration, together with indirect European immigration through Australia, North America, South America and South Africa.
• Beginning in 1871 the New Zealand Government began to offer assisted passages to selected immigrants and others nominated by relatives. The migration of the 1870s was the most significant in New Zealand history.
• In 1874 thousands of assisted immigrants arrived in New Zealand, forming the greatest level of migration ever. Almost half of the new immigrants came with government assistance. Three-quarters of these sailed directly from the United Kingdom. Because of economic difficulties in the later 19th century, assistance was finally terminated.
• In 1891 New Zealand received the last small group of assisted migrants. However, assisted migration was restored in 1904 when the country's economy returned to prosperity, making it once more an attractive country to new immigrants. During the early 20th century one-third of the immigrants came from Australia and two-thirds from the United Kingdom.
• Net migration increased after the Second World War; in the 1970s and 1980s policies were relaxed, and immigration from Asia was promoted.
• In 2009–10, an annual target of 45,000–50,000 permanent residence approvals was set by the New Zealand Immigration Service.
• In the 2018 census, 27.4% of people counted were not born in New Zealand, up from 25.2% in the 2013 census.
• Over half (52.4%) of New Zealand's overseas-born population lives in the Auckland Region.
• The United Kingdom remains the largest source of New Zealand's immigrant population, with around a quarter of all overseas-born New Zealanders born *Other major sources of New Zealand's overseas-born population are China, India, Australia, South Africa, Fiji and Samoa.

Emigration From New Zealand

While most New Zealanders live in New Zealand, there is also a significant diaspora abroad, estimated as of 2001 at over 460,000 or 14 percent of the international total of New Zealand-born. Of these, 360,000, over three-quarters of the New Zealand-born population residing outside of New Zealand, live in Australia. Other communities of New Zealanders abroad are concentrated in other English-speaking countries, specifically the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, with smaller numbers located elsewhere.

Records of New Zealand Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

One option is to look for records about the ancestor in the country of destination, the country they immigrated into. See links to Wiki articles about immigration records for major destination countries below. Additional Wiki articles for other destinations can be found at Category:Emigration and Immigration Records.

United States Emigration and Immigration Canada Emigration and Immigration Australia Emigration and Immigration

Types of Records

Archives New Zealand has produced the useful Migration Reference Guide to the history of migration in New Zealand and the records generated.

Passenger lists are not the only types of records generated by emigrants/immigrants. Emigration and immigration records are those generated by people leaving one country (emigrating) and coming into another (immigrating). These records include:

• Permissions to emigrate
• Records of passports issued
• Correspondence
• Statements of sponsorship
• Records of assisted immigrants

The information in these records may include:

• names of the emigrants,
• ages,
• occupations,
• destinations, and
• sometimes the place of origin or birthplace of the emigrant.
  

Some records have been known to include:

• the names of the parents of adult emigrants,
• whether living or deceased,
• their places of birth, and
• occupations.
  
• Where immigrants were sponsored, the information on the sponsor is included. These sponsors were either family members or future employers and provided information on the location of eventual settlement in New Zealand.

In addition to their usefulness in determining where an emigrant lived in the country before leaving their country of birth, these records can help in constructing family groups.

• Single adults sometimes emigrated with siblings, children usually came with parents, and as mentioned above, some records give even further family information.
• It was also a common practice to emigrate to a place a relative had already settled, so extended family members can also be found.
• If not going to a relative, many emigrants joined people from their home town, thus communities may be known for predominantly German, Danish, or English settlement.
• Sometimes the determining factor was religion, where a congregation would move almost en masse to a new country to escape either real or perceived persecution, or in an attempt to more fully live their religion in a country not yet bound by religious tradition.
• In some cases, immigration was assisted by a company which needed workers to develop and work the land that the company had purchased.

For Further Reading

There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog:

• New Zealand - Emigration and immigration
• New Zealand - Emigration and immigration - Indexes

The following thesis gives information about continental European immigrants.

• Continental European Assisted Immigrants in 1870s New Zealand by Mark Dunick

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