Do you have ancestors who have mysteriously disappeared? Have you considered that they may be among the estimated 3 million persons of British origin who lived in India?

In the recent BBC series Heir Hunters, there were several instances of missing potential heirs who had travelled to India. Between 1600 and 1947 people made the journey for many reasons: to work as administrators, as merchants, tradesman, missionaries, railway builders, doctors – in fact any occupations you can think of.

However, most were young men who joined the army and were sent to India. Rather one should say armies – there were the armies of the East India Company which operated until 1858, the Indian Army, which operated from 1858 to 1947, and the British Army.

Some returned but many lost their lives to the ravages of temperature, disease, war and wild animals. Some took their wives with them: others married in India and children were born, creating families who, although they called England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales ‘home’, actually lived on the subcontinent for generations.

The Families in British India Society (FIBIS) was established in 1998 to provide assistance to persons researching these ancestors and the lives they led in India and the surrounding area. Although FIBIS is a member society, it offers much to the general public. The website has an ever-growing free, searchable database which hosts more than one million records transcribed by volunteers from a wide variety of sources including ecclesiastical records, military records, cemetery inscriptions, personal memoirs and newspaper announcements.

The website is also home to the Fibiwiki – an ever-expanding digital encyclopaedia providing social and historical background to all aspects life in India.

Since most Europeans who went to India served in the East India Company Army, the Indian Army or the British Army, the Fibiwiki describes the various military structures that applied to them, the cantonments or stations in which they served, the campaigns or battles in which they took part and, wherever possible, something of the sort of social lives that they and their families lived in India.

FIBIS also publishes guides written by experts on related subjects – e.g. Researching Anglo Indian Ancestry and Research Sources for Indian Railways 1845-1947 .

Also the society’s chairman, Peter Bailey, author of Researching Ancestors in the East India Company Armies, has recently completed a new volume, Researching Ancestors in the Indian Army 1858-1947 .

FIBIS has transcribed data from many sources in the past and will continue to do so. For example, the staff at the British Library have estimated that up to 25% of baptism, marriage and burial records are missing from their India Office collections and FIBIS is adding to its database on a weekly basis using so-called ‘domestic occurrences’ in newspapers, registers and almanacs, as well as gravestone inscriptions.