About Us
This site was created in January 1996 to provide free resources for family history and genealogy research on South Australians and their ancestors at home and abroad. In the early years, information included:
More recently, the following articles have been added:
And maps of the world, the UK, Australia, and South Australia;
And most importantly, the following free searchable databases have been added:
Barry Leadbeater [Barry Leadbetter - incorrect spelling]
Site Owner
Adelaide SA
Keep up the good work. You are doing a great job."
ACT user 5-6-2008
"My first visit, great site, very clear, and it's rare to get so much vital data free of charge. Thank you."
Victorian user 23-3-2008
"Just dropping you a line to let you know how I appreciate your website. I have been using your shipping - love the information and all the references - which has saved me many hours of work. Still waiting for you to get to 1852 - I'm still looking for my ... who had arrived here by 1852. I also have been making good use of the WW1 data. Now that I have had time to have a good look at all the various databases on your site I realise all the hard work and many hours that you put into it and I would like to congratulate you on an excellent job and please keep it up."
South Australian user 22-1-2008
"Hello Barry, what a wonderful job you have done for those of us who are researching our families."
6-12-2007
"Your site has been tremendously helpful to my family history research. Though Perth-born, and now residing on the east coast, my heritage is entirely of 19th century South Australian immigrants, and I have learnt more from your site than any other source on the web."
NSW user 29-10-2007
"This site is a fantastic resource and I have learnt much about my South Oz family from it."
NSW user 29-10-2007
"I just wanted to say Thank You for putting together such an informative site. Please continue doing a great job. I have only just recently started to research my family history and found your site to be fantastic. There is such a huge amount of information on the net that isn't relevant to me, and I found myself spending hours and not achieving anything I wanted to achieve, and finding info that I wasn't looking for, and not finding info that I was. Your site is definitely in my favorites. I will be back again."
South Australian user 17-10-2007
"This is my family and I know that the wife was not Sarah. She was Catherine. See the following webpages for more information ...
Your website is very good so I hope you will correct this one small piece of erroneous information." [claim checked and database corrected - BL]
27-7-2007
"Hi Barry, thank you for such wonderful information. You are a generous, kind hearted person who obviously loves helping others."
South Australian user 2-6-2007
"Dear Barry, thank you so much for the "how to" instructions. I found my ... in less than 5 minutes and I'd never had any luck before at all. Fantastic."
7-5-2007
"I have searched your site and found the marriage of one of my husband's ancestors. With thanks, this site opened a gateway of information on this side of the family I have been researching."
Victorian user 3-5-2007
"I'm always grateful for your genealogical databases on your family history site. You do good work. So many thanks."
1-5-2007
[In 2005/6 we received several emails from irate mac users and firefox users complaining that they were unable to access our databases. About 7% of our users were affected. We redesigned the search engine to make the databases compatible with all modern mainstream browsers. BL]
- A timeline of 19th century South Australian history,
- South Australian family tree resource directory including the Leadbeater family,
- South Australian genealogy resource directory including local history groups,
- Australian genealogy resource directory by state,
- Worldwide genealogy resource directory by country, and a
- Family tree software resource directory.
More recently, the following articles have been added:
And maps of the world, the UK, Australia, and South Australia;
And most importantly, the following free searchable databases have been added:
- South Australian cemeteries together with a directory of other SA cemetery resources,
- Early SA marriages including those prior to civil registration and others not submitted to the registrar together with a directory of other SA birth, baptism, marriage, death & burial resources, and
- Early shipping arrivals in South Australia & their passenger lists together with a directory of other SA shipping and immigration resources.
The passenger lists, in particular, are continually being revised and expanded. It is our aim, wherever feasible, to give the full names of immigrants, including wives, children and those accomodated in steerage.
Performance statistics
These statistics compare the year 2007 performance with 2006- number of unique visitors increased by 42%
- number of page views also increased by 42%
- best performing page - cemeteries database increased by 160% due to the inclusion of West Tce early burials
- worst performing page - site map decreased by 12%
- average visit time 5.5 minutes
- average pages viewed per visit 4.0
- number of broadband users increased by about 57% while dialup users only increased by about 5% - hopefully this explains why the time spent on the site per visit decreased by 5%
- visitors' browsers
- Internet Explorer users increased by 33% (83% of visitors used IE in 2007)
- Firefox users increased by 100% (13.6% of the total)
- Safari users increased by 77% (2.4% of the total)
- Netscape users decreased by 50% (0.3% of the total)
- there has been a further temporary increase in traffic of about 45% since the TV screening of "Who do you think you are?" commenced. Most of this is expected to be gradually lost after the Australian section of the program concludes.
Affiliations
This site is entirely non-commercial and has no affiliation, formal or informal, with any genealogy society or other commercial or non-commercial organization. We do, however, host the web site of Adelaide Co-operative History (see below).Disclaimer
Use of this site and its data and information is entirely at the user's risk. Any data required for a critical application should be thoroughly checked by the user for accuracy and suitability to that application.About Adelaide Co-operative History
The Adelaide Co-operative History site is hosted by Family History South Australia. It was created in March 2006 to assist with South Australian history research including local and family history. The Co-op is an informal group which uses the resources of the State Library of South Australia, State Records of SA and other repositories to provide readily available free databases and informative history articles. The conditions of use, disclaimer, specifications and privacy policy are identical to those for Family History South Australia.Barry Leadbeater [Barry Leadbetter - incorrect spelling]
Site Owner
Adelaide SA
Unsolicited testimonial and critical emails
"My husband's family is from South Australia so I use your site a lot. I found a possible arrival for ... just recently, something I have been hunting for over 20 years.Keep up the good work. You are doing a great job."
ACT user 5-6-2008
"My first visit, great site, very clear, and it's rare to get so much vital data free of charge. Thank you."
Victorian user 23-3-2008
"Just dropping you a line to let you know how I appreciate your website. I have been using your shipping - love the information and all the references - which has saved me many hours of work. Still waiting for you to get to 1852 - I'm still looking for my ... who had arrived here by 1852. I also have been making good use of the WW1 data. Now that I have had time to have a good look at all the various databases on your site I realise all the hard work and many hours that you put into it and I would like to congratulate you on an excellent job and please keep it up."
South Australian user 22-1-2008
"Hello Barry, what a wonderful job you have done for those of us who are researching our families."
6-12-2007
"Your site has been tremendously helpful to my family history research. Though Perth-born, and now residing on the east coast, my heritage is entirely of 19th century South Australian immigrants, and I have learnt more from your site than any other source on the web."
NSW user 29-10-2007
"This site is a fantastic resource and I have learnt much about my South Oz family from it."
NSW user 29-10-2007
"I just wanted to say Thank You for putting together such an informative site. Please continue doing a great job. I have only just recently started to research my family history and found your site to be fantastic. There is such a huge amount of information on the net that isn't relevant to me, and I found myself spending hours and not achieving anything I wanted to achieve, and finding info that I wasn't looking for, and not finding info that I was. Your site is definitely in my favorites. I will be back again."
South Australian user 17-10-2007
"This is my family and I know that the wife was not Sarah. She was Catherine. See the following webpages for more information ...
Your website is very good so I hope you will correct this one small piece of erroneous information." [claim checked and database corrected - BL]
27-7-2007
"Hi Barry, thank you for such wonderful information. You are a generous, kind hearted person who obviously loves helping others."
South Australian user 2-6-2007
"Dear Barry, thank you so much for the "how to" instructions. I found my ... in less than 5 minutes and I'd never had any luck before at all. Fantastic."
7-5-2007
"I have searched your site and found the marriage of one of my husband's ancestors. With thanks, this site opened a gateway of information on this side of the family I have been researching."
Victorian user 3-5-2007
"I'm always grateful for your genealogical databases on your family history site. You do good work. So many thanks."
1-5-2007
[In 2005/6 we received several emails from irate mac users and firefox users complaining that they were unable to access our databases. About 7% of our users were affected. We redesigned the search engine to make the databases compatible with all modern mainstream browsers. BL]