Find your ancestor in indenture / immigration records
then link back to India.

A private, evidence-first tool for indenture / Girmit / engagisme families in Reunion.

Most families have fragments: a surname, a ship name, an arrival year, a depot/pass number, or a village/district in India. TamizhConnect helps you store those fragments correctly, keep spelling variants together, and build the story carefully over time.

Record names exactly as written (keep variants together)
Capture anchor details: ship / year / port / depot / record number
Separate proven facts from hypotheses
Invite relatives privately to build one shared tree

Search Reunion records free Start free account Go to my family tree Upload documents (…)

No credit card. Read our privacy policy.

Free to start. Private by default. No DNA kits. We don’t sell personal data.

Built for real research

Why families use TamizhConnect for indenture

Search using ship/year/origin — not just name.
Keep spelling variants together under one person.
Evidence-first workflow (facts vs leads).
Private by default – you decide who sees what.

For families researching indentured labour migration — ships, depots, origin places and name variants — not generic “ancestry” marketing.

Records available for Reunion

Engagisme records

1848–1882

Ship registers

1848–1882

Origin data

Pondicherry & Tamil Nadu

These record sets are being digitised. You can start your family tree now — we'll notify you when searchable Reunion records go live.

Browse available records

Professional document verification

Have documents? We’ll verify and structure them for you.

Ship manifests • Birth certificates • Temple records • Indenture passes • Electoral rolls

Digitise and tag documents inside your TamizhConnect tree
Trace 2-3 generations from a single case file
Follow indenture-era migration back to Tamil Nadu villages

One-time service from … — results stay in your account forever.

View service tiers

Réunion engagisme research: what helps

Capture ship/year/port + any register references as your anchor fields.
Record French spellings + Tamil name forms together to avoid duplicates.
Keep certainty levels: record facts vs family stories vs hypotheses.

Why indenture research gets stuck

Most people don’t get stuck because they lack motivation — they get stuck because the anchor fields are missing or scattered.

Ship/year/pass number saved in random notes, not structured fields.
Names recorded with one spelling, causing duplicates later.
Origin places written as old districts (zillah/thana) and not mapped cleanly.
Family stories mixed with record facts — making later verification impossible.

TamizhConnect is opinionated around doing this carefully, so you're not constantly fighting the software.

What you can do with TamizhConnect

Store the anchor fields properly

Ship, year, port, depot/pass number, record references. These are the keys that unlock archives later.

Keep spelling variants together

Colonial registers change spellings. Store variants under one person so you don’t split your own history.

Map origin places cleanly

Zillah/thana/village as written, plus modern mapping where known — without overwriting the original record text.

Evidence-first, private sharing

Invite relatives to collaborate without exposing your entire tree publicly. Facts vs leads are explicit.

Start your indenture research in 2 minutes.

Create a free account, then add ship, year and origin details as you find them.

Create a free account Go to my family tree

How it works in 3 steps

Create your free account
Sign up with email or Google, set your base country, and create yourself as the first person.
Search records and capture the anchor
Start with ship/year/origin/record number if you have it. Save spelling variants and source links.
Use evidence, not guesses
Attach records/notes to support villages and relations. Keep “uncertain leads” as hypotheses until verified.