The South Dorset Group met on 9th January 2002 to hear Jane Ferentzi-Sheppard talk about the Dorset Migration Index. Tony Johnson, the South Dorset Group's press reporter has written the following review of Jane's talk.

Over the centuries people have been steadily emigrating from Dorset to foreign lands and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Recently Jane Ferentzi-Sheppard, a research worker from West Dorset, spoke to the South Dorset Group about her efforts to record details of these individuals and their destinations.

Industry in Dorset has been largely agricultural through the ages, with low wages and poor conditions. Many people have therefore been persuaded to move elsewhere in an effort to improve their lives. Civil strife (such as the Monmouth Rebellion) and religious intolerance were also further reasons for leaving the county.

Jane explained that she was collecting information from many sources, including the English and Welsh census, the American census, Parish records (both in UK and overseas), Ship's psasenger lists etc. Newspapers of the day carried advertisements offering cheap passages to popular locations, but many men worked their passage to the New World and jumped ship on their arrival.

With the help of several grants, all this data is being processed in Bridport with some interesting results. The most sought-after destinations were North America and Australia - for example many residents of Whitchurch Canicorum helped to populate Jefferson County in New York State around 1830. Closer to home, there was a marked exodus from the villages of Netherbury and Stoke Abbott to the mining areas of South Wales, and migration from East Dorset to Lancashire. A lot of Dorset born people seem to have joined the London Police Force by 1881 too! The exodus from our county was so great that some villages lost up to 50% of their inhabitants in the 19th century. Many settlers did return home however - either temporarily or permanently. They may have come back for marriages or christenings, preferring to use their home village church for these events. The author, Thomas Hardy, was one example of a returning migrant. He emigrated to America in 1862 when he was 22, but later returned to settle in his native Dorset.

Jane is still looking for help with this project. If your Dorset born ancestors left the country be it to Hampshire, Wales, London, America, Australia, or anywhere else in the world, Jane would like to know. She wants an accurate picture of migration from Dorset and is surprised that as yet she has no records of migration to South Africa and very few records of migration to Newfoundland. It is very important that you lay your information out in a set-format - this makes data processing and input much quicker - so please send an email to: dorsetmigration@aol.com

The Migration Index also has its own website at http://www.dorsetmigration.org.uk/

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