Colonial Office 386 derives mainly from papers of the South Australian Land Commissioners, 1834-1840; the Agent-General for Emigration, 1837-1840; and the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission, 1840-1878. The responsibilities of these agencies included advising the Colonial Office on matters connected with colonial lands and emigration, diffusing information for emigrants, managing the collection and despatch of emigrants to Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope and the West Indies, enforcing the Passenger Acts, and, between 1846 and 1859, scrutinizing the acts and ordinances of the colonies. This material is available on microfilm reels B-1627 and B-1854 to B-1867.
Only selections relating to Canada were microfilmed consisting of internal office records, internal office registers and indexes, correspondence and reports, statistical records and newspapers. Information on office organization is supplied in the correspondence relating to the setting up and the closing of the Land and Emigration Board; in the instructions and regulations which deal with accounting procedures and office management; and in the correspondence and memoranda connected with the office establishment. This material is concentrated in volumes 2, 3, 140, 177 and 178. Quite closely related are the volumes of office registers of correspondence, statistics, deaths of emigrants at sea and colonial acts and ordinances. The registers present many difficulties in tracing the registered items.
The majority of volumes contain the correspondence of the emigration authorities. The bulk of these are entry books of the office's out-letters. A number of the volumes are distinguished as the personal letterbooks of senior officials such as Agent-General T.F. Elliot (later Sir Frederick Elliot [1808-1880], Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1847-1868, and Sir Frederic Rogers (1811-1889), later Lord Blachford, who was first a Commissioner on the Land and Emigration Board, then, in 1857, assistant commissioner for the sale of encumbered estates in the West Indies, and finally Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1860-1871. Letters to the Colonial Office are separate from the rest of the out-letters, arranged according to the colony with which they deal.
Also included is statistical material gathered by the emigration authorities. The lists of ships chartered for emigrants in volumes 179-185 (1847-1875) are especially noteworthy as are volumes 139-140 (1835-1846) which contain the proceedings of Lord Gosford's Commission sent to investigate Canadian grievances about Crown lands, and the oral evidence taken before the Commissioners, 1835-1836. The evidence, often given by prominent Canadians, includes topics as varied as the clergy reserves, religion, education, the constitution, the post office and the fur trade.
Finally, the class contains newspaper material: volume 155, for example, is composed of press clippings of interest to the Colonial Land and Emigration Board, 1841-1847, while volumes 190-193 contain issues of the Colonial Gazette, 1839-1842. That paper took "Ships, Colonies and Commerce" for its province and published many items of general colonial interest, advertisements and information relevant to emigrants, and the views of Colonial Reformers such as Charles Buller in the period immediately following the Durham Report. Most of the volumes in CO 386 are indexed in some fashion, chronologically, alphabetically, or geographically, either at the beginning or end.
