Was your Australian ancestor in the circus? Or some other travelling show? The 'Genealogical Database of Australia's Travelling Showpeople' is designed to assist you to make preliminary inquiries about that long-lost circus or other itinerant show business ancestor.

Why are many Australians finding these ancestors? The reason is fairly straightforward: in the pre-electronic age, a small and widely-dispersed Australian population ('townies' in the showman's argot) was entertained by a large itinerant population of travelling showpeople ('showies' in the same argot).

As yet uncounted, the show people may have numbered as many as several thousands in the most prosperous eras of activity, arguably the 1880s, the early 1900s, the 1920s and the post-war era. Many circus boys took publicans' daughters as wives. It was not unknown for 'townies' and their families to assume the vagabond life of a 'showie' - and for 'showies' and their families to retire into urban respectability as 'townies' . The latter transitions were evident as the travelling show has, since the 1920s, gradually lost ground to radio, television, cinema and new forms of electronic entertainment, not to mention the general urbanisation of the Australian population.

This CD has 31,767 records in 8 tables - circus associations, many birth, marriage and death records, obituaries and more.

Searchable using QFHSdatasearch, this is a generic interface designed to search genealogy databases and developed by the Queensland Family History Society Inc. This version features field oriented and keyword searches, Boolean selection, sorting and wildcard searches.CD-ROM.

1 computer optical disc.

For optimal use please load the CD-ROM into one of the public PCs and follow the instructions.