Immigration to Queensland from UK 1870s why do it

Apart from those who are fleeing persecution, most people immigrate for economic reasons. Either they hope to be better off themselves, or that their children will get better opportunities. That was as true then as it is today.

Your ancestors may have spent generations in one area, but when you look through the parish registers and census records, you will most likely find that your ancestors were among the vast social underclbutt of farm labourers, factory workers, and servants. For generation after generation, these people worked very hard for others, were paid a pittance, lived in poverty, got sick and died. And if these people thought they had it hard, they also lived with the knowledge that their children would have the same hard life, locked in a cycle of multi-generational poverty. It was unthinkable that these people would ever own land or a business in the UK, yet they would hear stories of how such things were possible in the colonies, and this motivated them to risk the long and often dangerous sea voyage involved.

While it is usually easy to understand why people immigrated in general, it is often harder to pin down why they immigrated to particular places. But there were often two main reasons for going to a particular place. Firstly, people often went to places where they are already knew people, relatives or friends who had previously immigrated and who sent letters back to the UK praising their new home and urging others to come and join them (often offering to pay for their pbuttage). If you were going to a strange new country, naturally it would be easier to go to a place where there were people welcoming you and with whom you could stay with until you got yourself established. The second reason is immigration agents. Immigration agents were paid to organise the immigration of suitable workers for either a large business or into a district (funded by a consortium of local employers desperate for more workers), so that determined the destination for immigration (knowing that a job was waiting there for you). Finally, some people just tossed a coin, or took the first boat going somewhere and got off at whatever town took their fancy, so sometimes sheer luck is a factor in where your ancestors immigrated to.

So if you are trying to work out why your family immigrated to a particular place, look at their occupations (in case it was an employment-related choice) and look for family members who might have immigrated earlier to that place.

Kerry