Miners' petitions now archived, thanks to local volunteers

Families can now search the names of thousands of diggers who signed petitions on the goldfields in the 1860s - thanks to Forbes volunteers. Forbes Family History Group members the late Jean Little and Max Thomas have been at the heart of finding the historic petitions and transcribing the thousands of names on them - now they are available for everyone to search at the State Archives. The Jean Little Index is described as being a valuable addition to the Archives' online finding aids, and the organisation acknowledges the mammoth task of deciphering the names. Cheryl Barton from the Forbes Family History Group shares the story ... In October 2010, following a request from Forbes Family History Group member Jean Little, Max Thomas discovered a number of signed petitions at State Archives in Sydney. These four petitions had originated from the Lachlan Goldfields in its infancy. Two protested the frontage system of licensing which the miners felt was unfair. The third was named the Aliens’ Petition and protested the fact that the non-British miners were affected by the Aliens Act which was designed to exclude the Chinese from the goldfields following the Lambing Flat riots in 1860. The fourth petition was called the Spicer Petition, named after William Spicer who had been at Lambing Flat in 1860 when the riots occurred. He was imprisoned for inciting the rioting, although he was actually attempting to prevent it. That petition was 42 feet (13 metres) long, consisting of two foolscap pages glued together, two wide with the next pages glued on the bottom. All these petitions were photographed by Max, taking around half a day, and the photos were taken to Forbes Family History rooms. A number of people attempted to decipher the signatures, complicated by the fact that many of the signatories were barely literate. Jean Little took over the task at her home over the next five years and she then indexed the names in alphabetical order. There were more than 4000 signatures in the Spicer Petition and over 7000 with the others included. In 2015, Jean brought the completed index lists to the Family History rooms but they were rarely used. An attempt to give them a wider circulation was stalled by the Covid outbreak. Sadly, before more could be achieved, Jean passed away. In January 2025, Max Thomas showed the indexed names to an archivist at State Archives. She was overwhelmed by the detail of Jean’s work and the indexes were gratefully accepted, with digitisation proceeding. By April 2026, the names of more than 7000 miners who had been on the Lachlan Goldfields (later Forbes) were available on the NSW State Archives website.