Births, Marriages & Deaths

Civil Registration

Government recording of births, marriages and deaths in Australia is done at state or territory level. In Tasmania this official recording, known as civil registration, began on 1 December 1838.
Some of our indexes include dates earlier than 1838 and this is because the information has been gathered from other sources such as church records.

Registers

Most of our resources relating to births, marriages and deaths are indexes to these events, rather than copies of the registers or certificates themselves. However, there are some exceptions to this, including early records for Tasmania, where we hold images of the actual registers as shown below. This means that you will not need to order certificates for events prior to 1900:

These microfilms were issued by the Archives Authority of Tasmania. For detailed information on how to use them, please refer to the guide on top of the microform cabinets.

Indexes

We also hold the following indexes to births, marriages and deaths in Tasmania in the Genealogy Centre on the 1st floor:

Ordering Certificates

Tasmanian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages
Certificates should be ordered from the Tasmanian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Their website has details of costs and how to apply.

What information will I find?

Australian birth, marriage and death certificates can contain lots of useful information for the family historian. Death certificates, in particular, can be very informative and often contain the names and ages of children and the length of time spent in Australia. For a detailed breakdown of information recorded, see our guide:
Information found on certificates for Australian states, New Zealand and the British Isles

Other Sources

Other useful sources of information include indexes to newspaper notices and church records. To find these, try searching our online catalogue using these keywords: + tasmania:

• church records
• death notices
• marriage records
• obituaries
• registers of births

Related Pages

See these pages for other information related to Tasmanian births, marriages and deaths:

• Cemeteries