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Family History Month

Family History Month

August is National Family History Month Australasia. It’s a great time to start exploring your family tree or follow new leads. Join State Library of Queensland for a series of events showcasing how you can make the most of our resources to explore your family connections.

A group of four women and one man sitting outside a wooden house

Getting started

Our family history pages are a great place to start for family history research.

Find out the steps involved in tracing your family tree.
Consult our useful websites for family historians and discover more places to search online.
Research guides will help to lead you on new and interesting paths.
Search our free indexes to see if your ancestor appears.
Become a member to access historical newspaper databases from home.
Ask a librarian for help researching your family history or arrange a research appointment.

Onsite events and webinars

Workers at Sawmill in Nerang circa 1896

Booking required

Sweat, Strikes & Sunshine: Queensland’s Working Heritage

Fri 1 Aug · 10:30–11:30am

Join State Library research librarians to learn about the resources available for finding information on Queensland's working heritage.

View of the Gympie Railway Yard, 1882

Booking required

Railway connections in your family history

Tue 5 Aug · 2–3pm

Join us for this online webinar to explore ways to find ancestors employed in the railways.

Who's your mob?

Booking required

Mon 11 Aug · 10am–12:30pm

Thinking about starting your Indigenous family history search but aren't sure how or where to begin?

Man steering a horse drawn funeral hearse

Booking required

Death Records: pathways into people's lives

Wed 20 Aug · 10–11am

Explore death records and what they can reveal about the lives of your ancestors.

Four nurses in uniform having tea in a garden

Booking required

Thu 28 Aug · 1–2pm

From trailblazing achievements to the essential work of daily life, explore the women in your family tree.

Family history appointment service

Book a family history research appointment. Our qualified library staff can assist you with your research.

staff member showing client how to use microfilm reader in library

Family history resources

First Nations family outside wood building.

Who's Your Mob?

Tracing your First Nations family history and don't know where to start? Discover key resources for family history research.

Woman using laptop at State Library. Photo by Jeff Camden.

Databases for family history research

Databases are an excellent way to find information on your ancestors, enabling you to gather material from multiple sources. Our family history databases include historical newspapers, and biographical sources.

A typical family watching tv in 1959

Family history webcasts and videos

Family history webcasts cover major family history topics, including birth, death and marriage records, newspapers, immigration and shipping, house histories, World War 1 records, and the roles of the major family history societies and repositories.

From the blog

photograph of Queensland Post Office Directories

Finding People and Places: Using directories and almanacs for house and local history

Neighbours, businesses, storekeepers – who lived in that neighbourhood in 1895, and who was still there in 1923?

A family tree chart with names and branches

Recording your family history

Recording your family history is an important step in the family history journey. This blog outlines different ways you can record your family history and help to preserve your research for future generations.

Black and white image of 2 cane farmers reading newspapers

Newspaper sources at State Library

Discover State Library of Queensland's newspaper collection, from microfilm and paper copies to online databases to clipping files, scrapbooks and cuttings books.