South Australian Births

Searching the births

Enter the child's, father's, or mother's surname into its box. The other surnames, all given names, and birth date are optional.

If used, the date must be formatted as yyyy-mm-dd for the exact date (eg 1839-03-27), yyyy-mm for the month, yyyy for the year only, or mm-dd for the birthday with unknown year.

Note that the exact and sounds like searches only apply to the child's surname. All other fields are always searched by the contains method.

If you do not get the expected results, read the more detailed help article on advanced searching of our databases.

Birth Notes

With a dial-up internet connection, the index to this, our largest individual database, takes several minutes to load before the 1st search can proceed. Subsequent searches are quite fast. Broadband users will find the whole process to be much quicker.

The place is usually the residence, which may not be the birth place. If the place is not recorded, the registration district is abbreviated within brackets to give an indication of location.

Most of the birth records prior to civil registration are from church baptism registers. If there is no birth date, the baptism date is used and indicated by (bap), but it may be long after the birth. Where there is a baptism date, the place is where baptised or the residence, which may not be the birth place. The mother's maiden name and any former married names are usually added.

If the birth you require is not in this database, search for other SA birth resources.

Birth Sources

The major sources of these birth records are the (Holy) Trinity Church baptism register and the South Australian Births Registrations 1842 to 1906, SA Genealogy & Heraldry Soc, 1997. Other church records and newspapers of the day were also used.

Acknowledgment

Grateful thanks to the contributor of new and revised birth data from other sources.