How to Trace Your Convict Ancestors

In this revised and expanded edition of Janet Reakes's bestselling guide, comprehensive listings of convicts sent over on the First, Second and Third Fleets make the task that much easier of establishing convict ancestry. In this useful book, the author guides the reader through key events of convict life from the commission of the crime, through sentencing, languishing on the hulks awaiting transportation, the voyage out, work assignment, punishments and eventually to ticket-of-leave or pardon. The author discusses the records that are most useful to family historians, so that in compiling family trees they also gain an insight into daily life in the early days of white settlement in Australia.