"Ancestry tourism" is on the rise as people venture to Bathurst to trace their ancestors, according to Bathurst Regional Council tourism and visitor services manager Dan Cove.

"Not many people have heard of it in the sense that it's only recently become a 'thing'," he said.

"It's always existed, people have always been tracing their roots and that includes journeying to where their parents and great-grandparents came from, but it's become a more important phenomenon.

"A lot of people are coming in [to the Bathurst Visitor Information Centre] saying they're researching information on their family tree; they come in to us then they go down to the Bathurst Historical Society Museum."

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Ancestry tourism was identified at the end of 2019 as an emerging global trend. With Bathurst being a heritage city, many paths trace back to the region.

"It's something we are aware of and we're looking to definitely capitalise on and grow," Mr Cove said.

"There's a couple of icons out here. There's the gold rush ... the great gold rush of the 1870s, but the big one really is the migrant camp which was at one stage this massive, massive camp for incoming migrants.

"At the Bathurst Visitor Information Centre we've been getting a lot of people who have been coming in and saying 'my grandfather was there', 'my great-uncle was there', 'my whole family came through there'."

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Local resident and member of the Bathurst District Historical Society Sarah Swift began looking into the 140-year history of her house around three years ago.

Jacob Neave and his family were the first Mrs Swift found and they happened to have a significant history.

"They'd moved from England and the husband became a caretaker at the old TAFE and then a year after his wife died, he actually moved in to live at the TAFE because it was just himself and his two sons had gone to World War One," Mrs Swift said.

"Then I found the sons' war papers and all their files and it just grew and grew, so I had this massive family history of this couple and following the thread led me to their descendants who now live on the Central Coast and Coffs Harbour."

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When COVID restrictions eased, Mr Neave's great-grandson Peter Henessy visited Bathurst to reconnect with his family history.

"They knew that Bathurst was in their family; they remember their mother visiting in the 80s and knew there was some sort of history here, but didn't know what," Mrs Swift said.