For many family historians, the name of their Chinese ancestor is the least certain thing they know. They are more knowledgeable about the places they lived as these can be more securely established through the birth registrations of their ancestor’s children, licence applications of various kinds etc.
For local history researchers, there is a way of searching the index to Certificates Exempting from the Dictation Test (CEDTs) by the name of a town to find the names of Chinese residents for the period 1902 to 1956 in Queensland. For other Australia jurisdictions see https://chineseaustralia.org/where-to-find-cedt-applications-and-certificates/ (Kate Bagnell 2010 Collecting CEDT applications and certificates).
Instead of using the usual NAA name search, go to the advanced search to search for items within a series. https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/AdvSearchSeries.aspx
This is an example of how to search for people who gave Warwick as their principal place of residence between 1908 and 1956. For other time periods, use the applicable series number from the table below.
These are the Queensland series numbers which can be used in the above search.
| J2481 (Proclamations under The Chinese Immigration Restriction Act 1888) | 1897 – 1902 (Indexed by name only) |
| J2482 (Certificates of Domicile issued under The Immigration Restriction Act 1901) | 1902 – 1906 (Indexed by name and place) |
| J2483 (Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test issued under the Immigration Restriction Acts 1901-1905) | 1908 – 1956 (Indexed by name and place) |
| J3115 (Alien Immigration correspondence files) | 1899 – 1928 (Indexed by name and sometimes by place) |
| BP343/15 (Register of CEDT holders departing from Townsville) | 1916 – 1955 (Indexed by name and place) |
These are the numerical results for searching for residents of Warwick by the different series.
| J2481 (Proclamations under The Chinese Immigration Restriction Act 1888) | 0 (not indexed by place) |
| J2482 (Certificates of Domicile issued under The Immigration Restriction Act 1901) | 1 |
| J2483 (Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test issued under the Immigration Restriction Acts 1901-1905) | 28 |
| J3115 (Alien Immigration correspondence files) | 0 (not fully indexed by place) |
| BP343/15 (Register of CEDT holders departing from Townsville) | 1 |
All the Warwick CEDTs in series J2483 have been digitised.
Twenty-eight CEDT applications were made by 26 residents as two made return trips. One of them was the well-known Sam War, who returned to China with his Warwick-born daughters Susan and Jenny, in August 1916. On the same voyage of the Nikko Maru was Willie War. All four returned on different dates.
When searching for a city which also a major port, you will need to add the word “of” to the name of the city or you will end up with the names of every one who transited through the port regardless of their usual place of residence. For example, using Townsville as a search term alone will yield 3674 results in series J2384.
By changing the search string to of Townsville using exact phrase instead of all the words, the number of results for Townsville reduced from 3674 to 781.
So by searching by town rather than by name, you may be able to track a single individual with name variants or find related individuals who may have anglicized their name. Local historians will be able be able to build on their knowledge of the Chinese residents of a place of interest, and maybe capture the name and photograph of someone previously unknown.
Cemetrees 