Presbyterian Children's Homes Records

The Presbyterian Children’s Homes Records are held by the Presbyterian Church of Queensland. These records largely consist of minute books, relating to committees that ran Presbyterian children’s Homes in Queensland. Unfortunately, there are no personal records with details about individual children in this Collection.

Access Conditions

To access these records an initial enquiry must be made in writing to the Clerk of Assembly, Presbyterian Church of Queensland.

Records

The records include:

• Minutes of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Presbyterian Children’s Homes (The women’s Auxiliary raised funds for the maintenance and upkeep of the homes):
  October 1922 to March 1933
  March 1933 to September 1941
• Minutes of the Committee on Orphan Homes:
  July 1924 to October 1932
• Minutes of the Family Welfare and Child Welfare Committee (The minutes make reference to the Reports of the Matrons of the various homes. These reports would have been filed with the other correspondence received by the committee, but the correspondence files no longer exist):
  July 1924 to October 1932
  June 1963 to May 1977

The minute books sometimes contain information about individual children living in a Home, for example, the minutes may contain references to a child’s admission to a Home and the circumstances surrounding it. The Presbyterian Church of Queensland Archives has examined the minute books for such references to children and provides details to former residents where such information exists.

Unfortunately, there are no personal records with details about individual children and their time living in the Homes in this Collection. Former staff members from Presbyterian Children’s Homes during the 1960s and 1970s period have reported that the only records kept relating to the administration of the Homes. They recalled that records relating to individual children and families were kept by social workers employed by the various government departments.

This collection contains some records from W. R. Black Home and Blackheath Home. These records were for a time part of the collection of the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland. The records contain some basic information about children who lived at these Homes.