Ceylon

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Ceylon, to the South East of Madras Presidency

Ceylon, a large island and British colony in the Indian Ocean, separated on the N.W. from India by the Gulf of Manaar and Palk Strait. It lies between 5° 55' and 9° 51' N. and between 79° 41' and 81° 54' E. Its extreme length from north to south is 2 712 m.; its greatest width is 1371 m.; and its area amounts to 25,481 sq. m., or about five-sixths of that of Ireland. In its general outline the island resembles a pear, the apex of which points towards the north."[1] The island is now called Sri Lanka.

History

The Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, followed by the Dutch in the 17th Century with the British, as usual, arriving late - 1796 - when the British East India Company established control. In 1802 Ceylon became a British Crown Colony. The island was unified in 1815 (previously there had been three kingdoms) and the island finally gained its independence in 1948.

Military actions

Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps

The Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps was a Volunteer Corps established  in 1861. Initially the movement consisted of the Ceylon Light Infantry Volunteers but by the 1900s also had Artillery, Medical, Engineers and Supply and Transport units. 

The CPRC sent a contingent to South Africa in 1902 along with a detachment of the Ceylon Mounted Infantry. In 1910 the force became known as the Ceylon Defence Force.

A Corps of 150 ‘fine young Englishmen’ left Ceylon in 1914, comprised not only of planters but also Government servants, Colombo businessmen and others. They served in Egypt and were then attached to the Wellington infantry Battalion of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the ANZAC division at Gallipoli. The high standard of the men led to virtually all of them receiving commissions and they went on to serve in other regiments  which meant this Corps then ceased to exist. [2]

Records

Except for the few short years when the East India Company was in control (1796-1802) records for Ceylon will not be found in the India Office Records at the British Library, but at The National Archives at Kew. For example, the description and succession books of the Ceylon Rifles covering years 1809-1872 are held under reference W025/638-641 (these include officers services) and reference WO23/158 includes the admission books for the Ceylon Rifles and Gun Lascars for the period May 1868-Sept 1876. Personal data may also be held amongst the National Archive's Administrative Records of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Some birth marriage and death information in respect of civil registration from 1867 may be obtained by writing to Registrar General's Office, New Secretariat, Maligawatta, Colombo 10, Sri Lanka.

In Holland, located in the same building as the National Archives at The Hague but a separate organization, is the 'Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie' (Central Bureau for Genealogy - CBG) , the Dutch information and documentation centre for genealogy, family history and related sciences. Researchers visiting this centre found some copies of records relating to British Ceylon christenings. [3]

LDS Records

For general details about LDS records, including microfilms, see IGI.

Sri Lanka, Colombo District Dutch Reformed Church Records 1677-1990 are available on the familysearch website. These are not searchable by name but as images that can be browsed [4]

The North Parramatta Family History Centre in Sydney, Australia has the detailed indexes to the Baptisms and Marriages at the Dutch Reformed Church at Wolfendaal, Colombo, up to 1897. These are not LDS microfilms but are spiral bound photocopies made from the journals and indexes at Victor Melder's Sri Lankan Library in Melbourne.

Churches and cemeteries

A researcher advised a trip to Sri Lanka in 2010 "uncovered masses of records in churches in Kandy, Colombo, Galle and Matara that need to be photographed ASAP... The Methodist Church seems to have centralised all records prior to 1982 in Colombo".[5] "The Anglican church records are at the Diocesan library in Colombo. The records are from churches all over the Island."[6]

Several kinds of registers of the Dutch Reformed Church at Galle and Matara are to be found in the main office of the Christian Reformed Church of Sri Lanka, in Colombo. The volumes include baptismal (1677-1807), marriage (1744-1847) and burial registers (1770-1840s), all for Galle, and a baptismal register for Matara 1776-1800. No inventory is available and some of the material is heavily damaged. In the future, the collection may be transferred to the Wolvendaal Church[7]

The Galle Face Burial Ground was opened in 1803 and located on the south side of the Fort.[8] Trying to locate this cemetery which appears to have also been the Garrison cemetery, a researcher was told that a Roman Catholic church had been built on the site and all the tombstones moved to the Kanatte cemetery. She also visited the Garrison cemetery in Kandy which has been restored [9]

FIBIS Resources

Also see

External links

Maps

Other

Historical photographs online

Historical books online

There are chapters on Ceylon from page 139 A Voyage To India by Rev James Cordiner 1820 Google Books The author was in Ceylon 1799-1804.
"The Rival of "Para" Rubber in the East" page 219 The India Rubber World April 1, 1903 Archive.org
"Rubber Planting in Ceylon and the Malay States" page 225 The India Rubber World April 1, 1904 Archive.org
The Cruise of Her Majesty's ship "Bacchante", 1879-1882, Volume II- The East Compiled from the Private Journals etc of Prince Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales 1886 Archive.org. Includes China, Singapore, Ceylon.
The Book of Ceylon; being a guide to its railway system and an account of its varied attractions for the visitor and tourist by Henry W Cave 1908 Archive.org
The Ceylon Government Railway : a descriptive and illustrated guide, mainly extracted from the author's larger work "The Book of Ceylon" By Henry W Cave 1910 Archive.org
Poems in Captivity by John Still 1919 Archive.org. Includes poems about Ceylon.

Notes

  1. ↑ LoveToKnow 1911
  2. ↑ Great War Forum thread Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps (retrieved 15 May 2014)
  3. ↑ Andresen, Larry & Coreen British Ceylon christening records in The Hague Rootsweb Srilanka Mailing List, 01 January 2007 and 02 January 2007 Retrieved 15 September 2014
  4. ↑ *Colombo District Dutch Reformed Church Records 1677-1990 Familysearch
  5. ↑ ceylonsearch (Larry and Coreen) Early British Ceylon military records Rootsweb Srilanka Message Board 20 Oct 2010 8:56AM Retrieved 15 September 2014
  6. ↑ Andresen, Larry and Coreen Anglican Church Records repository May 13, 2014 GenForum: Sri Lanka Genealogy Forum. Retrieved 28 September 2014
  7. ↑ "Gold-Leaf Flattery, Calcuttan Dust, and a Brand New Flagpole: Five Little-Known VOC Collections in Asia on India and Ceylon" by Lennart Bes Itinerario Volume 36 Issue 01 April 2012, pp 91 - 106. Scroll to page 95, to the section "Galle Books, Christian Reformed Church (Colombo)" The address is given on page 106. academia.edu. Note: May be slow to open. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
  8. ↑ Page 27 List of inscriptions on tombstones and monuments in Ceylon by J. Penry Lewis 1913 Archive.org.
  9. ↑ Williams, Anne Winter Galle Face burial ground/Garrison cemetery Rootsweb Srilanka Message Board 13 February 2004. Retrieved 15 September 2014
  10. ↑ "New Light on the Identity of Philalethes" by Breden WM Gooneratne and Yasmin Gooneratne, 1971

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