Colonial Magazine

The Colonial Magazine and versions thereof were published in London. Check each issue in the volumes.

Fisher's Colonial Magazine has Obituary notices in each issue, as well as other items, including where all the troops are stationed and news throughout the colonies. Check the list of contents at the beginning.

Fisher's Colonial Magazine Vol 1, 1844 

The Simmonds’s Colonial Magazine has lists of BMD at the end of each issue. In Vol 3, 1844, I found a Supplemental list of Immigrants on board the Appolline from London, via Plymouth to Hobart Town (AU) 1 Oct 1842. The list gives immigrants' names, their wages, their trade and the name of their employer. 

Simmonds's Colonial Magazine Vol 3, pg 10

In the East Indian magazines look for Indian News. This may include BMD, military appointments and promotions, removals and forloughs, civil appointments, etc. 

East India and  Colonial Magazine, Vol 1, pg 386

Look for more issues on Google Books.


Relevant Links

Fisher's colonial magazine and maritime journal

Colonial magazine and commercial-maritime journal (HathiTrust)

East India And Colonial Magazine

Simmonds’s Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany (at IA)

Simmonds’s Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany (at Trove 6 years)

Related Post
British Ancestors in the Colonies

Serendipity Sunday - Civil Service in India

If you have UK ancestors that worked in India - you may find your ancestors mentioned in this publication....

Relevant Link

The Indian Civil service list for 1880

International Tea Day

Today is International Tea Day.

My husband took me to High Tea at the Empress Hotel on our honeymoon.  What an experience (even if, since we were camping and wearing jeans they put us out of sight behind a big pot)!!!

I come from a family of coffee drinkers. Even as a young girl I preferred café au lait

over hot chocolate after a day of playing in the cold snow or skating down at the town rink. I love my coffee, and it has to taste like coffee - not hazelnut or pumpkin or cinnamon. No latté or frappé. Coffee.

My husband was a coffee drinker also but his doctor told him he had to cut it out.  He had a hard time with it, trying chicory coffee and other pretend coffees.  Blech!!  One day a guy told him to try tea.  Not your everyday tea in a teabag, but real tea, like rooibos. He bought some and loved it! Especially after he read all the good things about drinking it. Well, my darling XY gets a one track mind.  He visited many tea shops, talked to tea merchants, and read about all the different kinds of tea. He experimented with many kinds, some caffeinated some not. Green teas, black teas, Indian teas, China teas, Brazilian teas. Each tea uses a different temperature water and seeps for different times. He bought a $99 kettle that he could set to boil to the exact temperature for the specific kind of tea he decided to drink after his meal. Then set the timer. He tried different methods of making the tea - tea balls, tea filters, etc. He bought cute little tea tins, all neatly labeled, that have taken over my kitchen cupboards.

He has become the Tea Master of the Neighbourhood.  After trying and tasting he has settled on a few favourites - rooibos, yerba mate, a black tea from India and a green tea from our local tea merchant's uncles farm in China. Once in a while he will make a ginger or cinnamon tea. I like the honey bush tea once in a while, but I'll stick to my coffee for now.

If you have an ancestor that was a tea merchant, you may find his name and listing in a trade directory.  Some of the directories from Asia have names and information on tea merchants, check the links from the related post and type "tea" in the search box.


Relevant Links

Tea: and the tea trade, 1850

Tea producing companies of India and Ceylon, 1897

A sketch of the growth and history of tea and the science of blending particularly adapted to the Canadian trade, 1881

James Finlay Collection



Related Post:  Who's who in Asia

The Post Office

The Post Office by Augustus Pugin Senior and Thomas Rowlandson

for Ackermann's Microcosm of London (1808-11).

When my husband's great grandfather, who lived on the Rainy River in Koochiching Minnesota, decided to retire from full time farming, he opened a general store in Central Village and became the village's first postmaster.

Several of my indirect Seale line were Post Office employees. A few men from the Quebec line were postmasters, and cousin Henry Seale worked as an Assistant Inspector for the Post Office in Kingston, Ontario in 1918.
Look under Post Office in the local directories and almanacs.

Kingston Directory 1918

The salaries of Canadian postal workers are in the Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, under Auditor General Report.  We find that Henry Edgar, as a Postal Inspector at Kingston, made $1350 for the year ending March 1919.  

When I was young we lived in a small town and our Post Office, established in 1948, was in the basement of someone's house. They had a section set up with a wicket behind which, in my time, Mr or Mrs Giroux sold stamps, mailed parcels and did other post office business.  This is the record of post masters for this post office...

Lists of Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office were often posted in local newspapers, as well as the Government Gazette. Also check University websites, some have lists of unclaimed letters addressed to students who have graduated and moved out of the dorms without giving a forwarding address.


Relevant Links

LAC - Post Office and Postmaster database search

Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada

Post Master finder - USPS

List of uncalled for letters, Wabash County, Indiana, 1861

List of letters unclaimed at Kingston, Ontario: Chronicle & Gazette 1833

Alphabetical list of Postmasters in Canada 1862

List of Post Offices in the United States, w/names of Postmasters etc 1828

Registered Letters of Canada: loss reported (missing money or contents) 1886

Registers of money, letters and packages sent to prisoners, US War Dept 1861-1865

Unclaimed Letters posted in the Victoria Government Gazette, AU

Allen County Genealogical Society Indiana - Unclaimed Letter Index

Unclaimed Letters at the Milwaukee Post Office 1836

List of Postmasters in Tasmania Newspaper 1853

The History of the Post Office Down to 1836 - UK

Canada Postal Guide 1821

Guide official du service postal Canadien 1917

Post Office Distribution Lists for Canadian Provinces

Newfoundland Post Office Circular (various years)

The Post Office of India and it's Story 1921

British Postal Museum -Appointment Records (available on Ancestry UK)

Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office, Auckland NZ to Dec 1862

Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office, Nelson, NZ 1857

Index to the Postal Working Map of Shanghai - 1904

Pre 1875 PEI Postmasters Database

Undelivered letters to Hudson's Bay Company men 1830-1857 (Google, limited view)

(Check at World Cat for libraries holding the above mentioned book)