*2010* ~ Year of the British Home Child in Canada

In recognition of the Home Children’s courage, ingenuity, vision & contributions in this forgotten period in Canada’s history, the Canadian Parliament has unanimously designated 2010 as the Year of the Home Child.  As well, the Canadian Stamp Advisory Board of Canada will issue one stamp in October 2010 in recognition of the Home Children, & The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism plans to include recognition of their stories in citizenship ceremonies.

Welcome to our site dedicated to the Descendants of British Home Children (BHC). We are an extension of the British Home Children Mailing List, hosted by Rootsweb. During the Child Emigration Scheme (called now British Home Children), between 1869 and the early 1930s, over 100,000 children were sent to Canada alone from Great Britain. According to the UK House of Commons Child Migrant's Trust Report, "it is estimated that some 150,000 children were dispatched over a period of 350 years—the earliest recorded child migrants left Britain for the Virginia Colony in 1618, and the process did not finally end until the late 1960s."

I am the descendant of a British Home Child, and it is to her, my great-grandmother Catherine Carroll, that I dedicate my work on this site.  Catherine was an 8 year old child when she was sent from Liverpool, England, to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, by the Liverpool Catholic Childrens Protection Society.  Her records did not survive.  However, Catherine did make a good life for herself in Canada, where she married and had six children.  She died young, buried in a grave that was almost forgotten.   But through this site and the efforts of so many others, we will make sure that children like Catherine Carroll will be remembered for their bravery, and they will be honored through our work and research, whether or not the receiving governments, such as Canada, are willing to acknowledge them.

Our ongoing project proposes to offer a complete, fully indexed and searchable database of BHC Descendants with a cross referenced database to the ships they arrived upon; relative BHCs, and the charitable agencies which sent them.  This ambitious, and immense, project hopes to account for thousands of child migrants, pattern their emigration and give descendants the ability to not only share their information, but to find others seeking their own BHCs and give a sense of community to those of us whose ancestors were alone, and the "outsiders" in vast new countries.

If you have ANY questions, PLEASE do one of the following:

Please note that participation in this database is NOT mandatory for membership. This is a labor of love that is free to all, open to the public and voluntary. It is our goal to find and index each and every BHC who entered Canada, Australia, and New Zealand during those dark years of child migration.

To view or add to the database, you will need to register as a member. There is, and will never be, any fee or charge to use this site.

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