Research Project
Full description Founders and Survivors is a partnership between historians, genealogists, demographers and population health researchers. The project has brought together a number of research data sets created from records relating to the 73,000 convicts transported to Tasmania in the 19th century and their descendents to create an online, searchable population database of national and international significance for historical, demographic and population health researchers. The records created of our convict founders are the most detailed descriptions of the bodies and lives of men, women and children created anywhere in the world in the 19th century. No other settler society has such a record of their founders' heights, eye colour, literacy, skills, family history, problems and temperament. We know so much about them when they were in the convict system, but we know very little about most of them once they were free. The history of Australia will be reconstructed from the grass-roots up, starting with the most disadvantaged of Australia's colonial settlers: the men, women and children transported as convicts to Van Diemen's Land. Families will be followed looking at life span, health, families, occupations and where they settled. They will then be connected with those who served in the AIF in World War 1 and compare the service records of the male descendants of male convicts to investigate changes in height, childhood diet and health, and resilience under stress. , Founders and Survivors