Plight of the Discharged Soldiers

[Sue Mackay]

Many of the soldiers and sailors discharged after 1815 found themselves in great distress and unable to find employment. In 1819 the Government released £50,000 for an aided emigration scheme to the Cape of Good Hope, and some 20,000 people applied to go, only a fraction of whom were accepted. The correspondence is held at the National Archives in Kew, and with the help of volunteer transcribers from the SA Rootsweb mailing list the letters A-E are now on line, and the rest will follow soon. Thousands of the applicants were discharged service men, and the letters contain a wealth of family information and service history, as well as a very poignant picture of life and conditions at the time. It is worth typing your name interests into the Find box of those files already on line even if you are more interested in a later letter of the alphabet. The 1820 settler scheme required people to emigtae in 'parties' of at least 10 able bodied men, so there are many lists of names and addresses contained in the correspondence of the person applying to emigrate

[Sue Mackay]

All the letters have now been transcribed

http://www.genealogyworld.net/settle...nce/index.html