National Archives Part 2: Exciting Start To My Family History Research!
A Great Place To Start!
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F98c99603-b7b9-41bd-b642-5e01c775ff7d_5760x3840.jpeg)
Without the National Archives of Australia and an unknown family member, I am not sure how far I would have gotten in my family history research.
I am carrying out my research alone, without access to other family members for assistance, and in the beginning, had very little information to go on outside of my immediate family members.
I also don’t speak the native language of my parents and ancestors, which is Polish, so this has made my research journey challenging and very interesting! But more on that in another post!
I did have the most basic information for my family, such as my parents' full names and date of birth.
If you read my last post, you might recall I described my friend Ruth as the catalyst for my decision to start researching my family’s past and discover the ancestors I had yet to meet.
So, at the beginning, I had the basic details of myself, my sister, my mother and my father. That was it. Anything more was yet to be discovered.
Enter the National Archives of Australia!
The archives have a plethora of information in their section on family history research including guides on exploring their records.
They also have a service where you can hire a research agent to assist you.
Here is a link to the “Start Here” page for family historians:
https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/search-people/researching-your-family
Entering only my father’s first name and surname in the basic search fields for their database returned remarkable results!
A digitised, free-to-download PDF, a goldmine of information on which to start my genealogical journey. I was astounded!
The records were my grandmother Jozefa’s application for naturalisation and included information from the International Refugee Organisation, post-World War II.
I now had in my hot little hands records detailing:
♥ My father’s birthplace.
♥ My grandmother’s full name, date of birth, place of birth and parents’ names.
♥ Names and dates of birth for my father’s two sisters.
♥ The journey they travelled from Europe to Australia as refugees, including the ship’s name and date of arrival in Australia.
With valuable information such as this, the start of researching my family history exploded with new leads and information. It was wonderful as I had none of this information previously!
Disclaimer – as with most national archives I suspect, not all records have been digitised, and others are yet to be inspected for approval to be opened for viewing and digitisation.
However, for a fee, you can apply to have these records opened and then digitised, which means anyone can then have access to view and download them.
In this instance, another family member has done this, and of course, I am very grateful to them!
Stay tuned for further posts where I dive deeper into these records with you and show you where this discovery led me!
Thank you so much for being here and reading, and in the meantime, I wish you many genealogical breakthroughs!
Kryssie xo.
My Tree Family History - Seeking Our Story In Our History.
What a fabulous resource!