Author Topic: Old Passport Registers  (Read 454 times)

Offline BushInn1746

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Old Passport Registers
« on: Friday 31 August 18 14:25 BST (UK) »
Hi

Just been reading a newspaper article (Newcastle Courant, 4th March 1786) of an English ship's Captain returning from Algiers, recalling an account of a ship being boarded at Cape St Vincent by an Algerine Corsair, to whom he showed his Passport and every other effort to prove he was a British Ship.

Because they thought he was an American imposter they impounded his ship and goods and took him off to Algiers.

It seems some Indexes of Passport Applications (probably name only?) survives in the FO (Foreign Office) Series.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/passports/


FO 639/1 Register of British ships entering Barcelona, passes issued, and imports and exports carried.
1786 to 1796
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C253809


FO 639/2
Entry Book of Certificates, Notes of Protest, Manifests, inventories of ships' stores, details of passports.
1777 to 1803 (Note Oct 1784 to Dec 1795).
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C253810


FO 610/1
Entry Book of Passports
Within this and the other volumes in the class it has been the practice to start a new numerical series on the appointment of a new Foreign Secretary 1795 to 1822
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C253179


Apparently, if your Ancestor was a Master Mariner (Captain), Merchant or Diplomat and needed to travel abroad there is a possibility they might have applied for a Passport and their name be listed in a Register?


Has anyone seen these please and what detail do they contain, or are they just names of Passport applicants?


If anyone wants to see these for their own research, they are likely original documents and a Readers Ticket would need to be applied for (with formal proof of your ID and current address). See 'Visit Us' on TNA website.


Mark

Offline GrahamSimons

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Re: Old Passport Registers
« Reply #1 on: Saturday 01 September 18 14:56 BST (UK) »
I looked for one passport (I have a copy of the document) - all that was in the register (1855) was the name, no address, destination, age - indeed nothing at all. The passport referred to above certainly won't have been a neat booklet in blue or burgundy - those are a 20th century invention.
Simons Barrett Jaffray Waugh Langdale Heugh Meade Garnsey Evans Vazie Mountcure Glascodine Parish Peard Smart Dobbie Sinclair....
in Stirlingshire, Roxburghshire; Bucks; Devon; Somerset; Northumberland; Carmarthenshire; Glamorgan

Offline BushInn1746

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Re: Old Passport Registers
« Reply #2 on: Saturday 01 September 18 17:15 BST (UK) »
Thank you Graham

I agree, if they don't have the town / address of where the applicant lived and no place of birth, the F H value is limited.

Yes they are only Indexes of applicants.

Collins, Tracing Your Family History by Anthony Adolph:-

Some 16th / 17th Century travellers applied for licences to pass 'beyond the seas', these can be sought in TNA classes E 157 and CO 1.

Applications for and issue of passports 1794 - 1948, including details of where the applicant wanted to go, are in FO 610, in date order but indexed for the periods 1851-62 and 1874-1916 in FO 611.

Passports were not compulsory and very few were issued before World War 1 the book mentioned.

Comment
From what I can gather, Diplomats and possibly a few Merchants / Captains of vessels, travelling or sailing to troubled areas where proving they were British was vital, might only have applied.

Mark