28% of all 19C Western Australian profiles are in wikitree!

Question

This is an update to, and methodology correction of, an earlier post.

Calculation Method

Count of births and deaths in Wikitree is taken from the Wikitree+ histograms here. I added together "Western Australia, Australia" (96%) and "Western Australia" (4%). Other known variations are negligible.

Control counts for births and deaths come from the Australian Bureau of Statistics product, Australian Historical Population Statistics. These numbers only start in 1848 (which is odd because civil registration commenced part way through 1841).

Marriages are the count of registered marriages from here. (I remembered to halve the count).

As I've been going through (up to 1854 so far), if I've identified more births or deaths than the official count, then I've raised the count. This happens most of the time, ten percent more is pretty common, but anywhere from 0.5% to 30% can happen. I'm hoping the ABS numbers get more robust as we get later into the century.

For 1829-1847, I've assumed profiles in wikitree represent 90% of the real total, with 5% known missing from wikitree, and 5% unknown missing. This is also similar to the result for 1848 to 1854.

Indigenous persons

Long story short, indigenous people are heavily underrepresented in the official figures and, to a slightly lesser extent, on wikitree.

The Result

28.1% of births, deaths AND marriages from 1829 to 1899 are in Wikitree. This is not across the board though, with numbers in the high 30s% from mid 1864 to 1880, tapering down to 10% at the end of the century.

1829 to 1854

For the period 1829-1854 all (well, c. 90%) profiles of people that were born, died or married in Western Australia are in wikitree. This has been pulled together from a number of sources.

Spreadsheets are here: Births to 1847, Marriages to 1847, Deaths to 1847, Births from 1848, Marriages from 1848 and Deaths from 1848.

Additionally, these profiles are all sourced, generally presentable and are generally connected to all their first degree family (at least if that connection is within the colony)

This was largely already the case, what I've been doing is filling in the gaps.

Discussion

I'm not sure how accurate the decline/plateauing in the 1850s is yet, but I do know the Victorian gold rush sucked huge amounts of people from the other colonies and diverted new immigrants.

Are there any other similarly dense pockets of wikitree?

Answer 1

That'll do Mark, that'll do.

Answer 2

Great work, Mark. I’ve appreciated all your additions to my families of interest in WA.

Comments

Making connections to existing profiles is one of the more satisfying parts of the process!

Answer 3

 - Thank you Mark , for your work in bringing the stats to us again. The fun will be once the ships begin to arrive, '1850', with the convicts that helped the SRC to start growing again, to the gold in Kalgoorlie in c.'1895', which brought the adventurers from the 'east', to dig gold, and build and leave behind the ghost towns

 - = West Aust Convicts - Ship Tree = - and

 - = West Aust Free 1841-1850 - Ship Tree = - also

 - = Patrick Hannan = - = Western Australia Divisions - Profile Tree = - 

 - cheers -

Comments

It's certainly gotten more challenging to fill in the missing gaps from 1852. Fortunately one wikitreer has done a lot of work building profiles of the single women who came to the colony in that period, and the Sappers and Miners and Enrolled Pensioner Force websites have been very helpful.

Answer 4

Thank you Mark, this is very interesting.