A Sikh Hawker in Australia in 1902

Breaking down brick walls

I recently broke down a major brick wall by locating my family's ancestral village in Punjab and would value any tips on steps I could take next.

I'll try to keep my story short but it gets a bit complex. I am a professional genealogist from Australia with Punjabi Sikh ancestry. I started genealogy as a hobby when searching for my ancestors, and it became a life-consuming passion! My great-grandfather Natha Singh and his brother Inder (photographed) left Punjab in the late 1890s to go to South Africa, after which they migrated to Australia in 1902. Both Natha and Inder were hawkers (back in Punjab they were soldiers and labourers). Because of racial immigration restrictions, Hawkers at the time were not allowed to bring out family, so Natha married an Australian woman with English parents instead. And my family got a bit disconnected from their heritage after that because none of the children (my grandmother and her siblings) married within the Sikh community.

However, after nearly 15 years of searching, I finally found our ancestral village. On my great-grandparents' marriage certificate, my great-grandfather's birthplace was listed as "Maroo, Punjaub." I tried googling "Maroo village" many times since locating their marriage certificate in 2015 but was never successful—assuming the story about the ancestral village being on the Pakistani side of being true. I never gave up though! I knew from family stories that it was a small village, so I thought I had minuscule hope of finding the village. I previously checked encyclopedias and asked Indian friends and others but I was getting nowhere. Then recently, I suddenly decided to do another search for "Maroo village Punjab" on Google, and Google corrected my spelling to "Mahru village Punjab" and directed me to the village on the map. I was gobsmacked! It's a small village 37 km east of Patiala…

I thought I might be satisfied once I found the family village… But now when it comes to research I can’t help but ask myself where next?

Rachel Croucher is associated with AAGRA and wants to bring Indian and South Asain geneaology research to the next level.

Photograph 1: Inder SINGH and Nuttah SINGH (brothers or ‘cousin brothers’ from Punjab, undivided India). Inder was the stepfather of Florence SINGH, whereas Nuttah SINGH was Florence’s biological father.

Photograph 2: Marriage certificate of Nutha (sic) SINGH and Emily Edith BELLINGHAM. Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Number: 1909/B/8008

Photograph 3: Dan CROUCHER and Florence CROUCHER (née SINGH) circa 1976.

https://www.aagra.asn.au/national-family-history-month-2025-launch-of-the-indian-and-south-asian-special-interest-group-at-the-society-of-australian-genealogists/?fbclid=IwY2xjawSzYGhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFucDB3c0lOOWlTTTFTaHRHc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHu-81RnKTwVvrv16_LLPfSL3GQj6HAKJCjZpghXWsEgiN4IX3r1lCInU-DzJ_aem_-Nyi9kuot902oj17V3kLiw