Cooktown & Maytown - The Early Years
The current Historical Exposé at Cooktown's Old Bank
Open Mon to Sat - 9am to 3pm (re-opening April 2nd)
Award Winning Display - Don't Miss It!
Cooktown Archives and Research centre open Mon to Fri 9am to 12noon
Family History is the means of putting 'people' back into history.
The more that we learn about people who lived in Cooktown, the more we learn about Cooktown. The Cooktown Historical Society is trying to build a ‘Bank’ of history so that people now and in the future retain the history of our area.
We invite you to deposit into the ‘bank’, any information about families, events or anything about Cooktown that you may know.
If however you would like to know more about your ancestors or people of Cooktown in general, then we invite you to make a withdrawal from the ‘bank’; payment is a donation to the Cooktown Historical Society.
We are also keen to build up our collection of photos on Cooktown and the region. If you have any photos of Cooktown, or its families, we would be interested in obtaining copies from you. You keep the original. We have a scanner so we are able to take a digital copy while you wait, if you don’t wish to part with your photos. Alternatively, you could scan them at about 600 dpi if possible, and send the CD to us. We would be most appreciative.
The Cooktown Historical Society has been working towards having all information placed on a searchable database, to enable searches to happen very easily and very fast.
To date (December 2006) we have over 40,000 names on our master Database. These people were all early residents of Cooktown from 1873 on.
The following databases have been digitized and are currently in use by our society.
- Index to Cooktown
- Births (1874 – 1905)
- Deaths (1883-1945)
- Marriages (1883-1907)
- Cooktown Cemetery Register (1874 – 2000)
- Residents and Property Owners (1878 and 1901) – Shows property description as well as owners of properties.
- Cooktown Businesses and Locations (1874 and 1886) – taken from advertisements in Newspapers and Almanacs.
- Cooktown State School Admission Registers (Incomplete due to missing years)
Boys School 1885 - 1921
Girls School 1919 – 1921
State School 1921 – 1941
- Cooktown Volunteers in WW1 Shows extensive research with military and civilian details
- Electoral Rolls of 1877, 1899 and 1914
- Publicans of Cooktown and the Surrounding areas up to 1900
- Post Office Directory (1889 – 1947)
- Daintree Divisional Board Rates Book (1880 – 1887)
- Hann Divisional Rates Book (1880 – 1884)
These books show owners as well as property description.
Photographic, Document and Map Collection – the documents have been indexed so that any reference to individuals can be easily located.
Maytown Cemetery – photos and plan of cemetery, plus details of burials
Coen Cemetery – photos and details of burials
Register of Lone Graves in the Cooktown area. (still growing)
We also have access to the James Cook Museum Collection of Photographs and Documents.
Our collection is continually growing, if you can’t find it this year, try again next year.
Cooktown Historical Society also conducts a photographic exhibition in the old banking chambers. Each year we tell the story of a slice of Cooktown’s colorful history. We are fortunate to have over 400 glass plate negatives which have been scanned into the computer at high resolution and then printed out to the required size for the exhibition on a photographic printer.
The ‘Old Bank’ building was originally built in 1891 as the Queensland National Bank and is typical of the Victorian era with magnificent red cedar counters and other décor. It is heritage listed inside and out and is worth the viewing as much as the exhibition.
Contact Details
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Shop Front:
“Cooktowns Old Bank”
Charlotte St., Cooktown
Call first for opening hours
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Cooktown Archives and Research Centre
PO Box 595
Cooktown, QLD 4895
Ph 07 4069 6640
Fax 07 4069 6650
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Mailing Address:
Cooktown and District Historical Society
P.O. Box 595
Cooktown, QLD 4895
Ph: +61 07 4069 5888
Email: historical_society@cooktowns.com
Bob Norris – President
Diana Spyker – Secretary
Jenny Habermann – Treasurer
