IMMIGRATION and EMIGRATION RESEARCH
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Tips Arrival Lists Departure Lists Books and Articles
Library of Congress - Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide to Published Sources
Tips for Finding Your Ancestors Arrival in the United States.
Finding Passengers Immigrating to the United States: Up until 1891 the title of the relevant manifests was “Customs Lists” or “Customs Passenger Lists”. In 1891 INS was formed and the lists were called “Passenger Lists”
In addition to what was known as the major ports (Boston, New York, Philapdelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans) there were another 95 ports in the United States. Therefore it is important to check the M334 Index at the National Archives which contains passenger lists for 70 of the non-major ports during the period of 1820-1874.
Passenger lists were prepared in the port of embarkation, so it is important to look for the person’s name in the old country.
Many immigrants landed in Canada or Mexico and then came to the U.S. by land or steamer. There is no record of people entering from Canada until 1895. Use the National Archives in Ottawa, Canada to see if your ancestor landed there.
Women were often listed under their maiden name even if married.
First and second class passengers were checked in their cabin and then sent on their way. They did not go through processing at Ellis Island or any of the other processing centers. For these people it is important to check the newspaper of the city of arrival since they often contained the names of such passengers.
Some boats disembarked passengers in one port and then went on to a second port to disembark the rest of the passengers. Other times passengers arriving from the old country, would land in a port and immediately get on a steamer to another port in the U.S.
Be sure to check for state and city passenger lists in case the federal list is lost
If you cannot find someone doing a name search look in the various indexes for the boats that arrived around the time you believe your ancestor arrived and then check the passenger list for that boat, keeping in mind there is probably a mis-spelling of the name.
There are numerous compilations available in book or microfische form including, but certainly not limited to the following:
PUBLISHED ARRIVAL LISTS AND INDEXES
Ancestry.com.
Digitized images of passenger arrival records of the U.K.,Hamburg, New South
Wales,Austraia and the U.,S.
The U. S. lists include :
New York, 1851-1892, with a
search engine for finding one passenger among the estimated eleven million
names.
Also passenger arrivals at Baltimore, 1820- 1852; Boston, 1821-1850; and New
Orleans, New York and Philadelphia, 1820- 1850. Also passenger arrivals at many
other ports in many other years, including colonial period arrivals.
Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore Steamship Arrivals 1890 - 1930
American Family
Immigration History Center . Digitized images of the passenger arrival
records of New York, 1892-1924, with search engine for finding one passenger
among the twenty-two million names.
The Morton Allen Directory of European Passeger Steamship Arrivals.(No
passenger lists)
For the Years 1890 - 1930 at the Port of New York and For the Years 1904 - 1926
at the Ports of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore. Genealogical
Publishing Company (January 1, 2001)
See
http://www.stevemorse.org/ellis/cimorelli.html for free online search of the
directory.
Boston Passenger Arrivals, 1848-1891. Massachusetts state copies of federal
lists.
Castle Garden aims to
post all New York passenger arrival lists, 1830-1892.
The Compass : a concise and factual compilation of all vessels and
sources listed, with reference made of all of their voyages and some dates of
registration / compiled by Lawrence B. Bangerter. (2 volumes)
Passenger and Immigration Lists Index: A Guide to Published Arrival Records
of More Than 3, 806,000 Passengers Who Came to the New World between the
Sixteenth and the Twentieth Centuries. Originally 3 vols.
Supplemental volumes published annually and gathered every few years into
"cumulative supplements." Filby, P. William, eta/., eds. Detroit: Gale Research
Co., 1981-present.
Glazier, Ira A., and P. William Filby, eds. Italians to America: Lists of
Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, 1880-1915. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly
Resources, Inc., 1992-present. 20 vols. On-going; completed so far up to 1902.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Boston-- Individual Arrival Cards, 1882-1929.
This is an index to the 24,000 cards available on microfilm. Some cards pre-date
1882 and some postdate 1929.
Migration from the Russian Empire, Lists of Passengers Arriving at the Port
of New York: October 1882-April 1886 by Ira Glazier
San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists. 4 vols. Original San
Francisco arrival lists prior to 1893 were destroyed by fire. Rasmussen
"reconstructs" them by using other contemporary sources, 1850-1875. Rasmussen,
Louis J.Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1978.
Registers of Vessels Arriving at the Port of New York 1789 - 1919. See
http://www.germanroots.com/registers.html for a list of Microfilm Catalog
Numbers for both the National Archives and the Family History Library
Rhode Island Passenger Lists. Three alphabetical listings: 1) alien
registration lists for Providence, 1798-1808; 2) customs passenger lists for
Providence, 1820-1872; 3) customs passenger lists for Bristol and Warren,
1820-1871. Taylor, Maureen A. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1995.
A Supplemental Index to Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Atlantic and
Gulf Coast Ports, 1820-1874. National Archives Micropublication M334.
Contains some pre-1848 Boston passenger arrivals and some pre-1853 New Orleans
passenger arrivals, thus supplementing the indexes for those ports. Also
contains arrivals at all other major ports except New York, and about 60 minor
ports.
Passenger Lists for
Galveston, 1850-1855. Translation of
lists printed in Hamburg and Bremen newspapers. Indexed. This material has been
incorporated into the Galveston Immigrant Database at the Texas Seaport Museum (www.tsm-elissa.org).
Blaha, Albert J.
Bremen Passenger Lists, 1920-1939, are currently being
transcribed and up-loaded to the Internet at
http://db.genealogy.net/maus/gate/shiplists.cgi,
with a search engine to help find one passenger among the many.
Antwerp Emigration Index.
Lists 5,100 emigrants from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, France and the
Netherlands who embarked from Antwerp during 1855. Hall, Charles M. Salt Lake
City: Heritage International, 1986.
Hamburg Emigration Lists,
1850-1934, are now available at
www.ancestry.com.
Reconstructed Passenger Lists for 1850: Hamburg to
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and the United States.
4 vols. "Reconstructed" lists based on Hamburg Emigration Lists. Smith, Clifford
Neal.McNeal, Ariz.: Westland Publications, 1980.
.
Ancestors On Board.com
Passenger lists of over 24 million records from ships sailing from the British
Isles to destinations worldwide 1890 - 1960
The Immigrant Ancestors Project, sponsored
by the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University, uses
emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants
in their native countries, which is not found in the port registers and
naturalization documents in the destination countries. Volunteers working with
scholars and researchers at Brigham Young University are creating a database of
millions of immigrants based on these emigration registers.
Books and Articles
Colletta, John P. They Came in Shjps: A Guide to
Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record, 3r ed. Orem, Utah: Ancestry,
Inc., 2002. Describes available records and indexes, colonial times to
mid-twentieth century, and explains how to find one passenger among the
millions.
Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
(www.cyndislist.com/ships.htm) links to over 440 sites with information about
ships, passenger lists, and crew lists.
"Immigration Records" is an informative essay at the
World Wide Web site of the National Archives,
www.archives.gov.
Konecny, Lawrence H. "Galveston's Missing Passenger
Lists." FORUM 6, no. 2 (summer 2001): 1, 13-14. Discusses what records are and
are not available.
Krasner-Khait, Barbara. "If Not Through New York, Then
Where?" Family Chronicle, March/April2000: 9-11. Discusses other ports of entry
for immigrants.
Meyerink, Kory L. "Immigration Sources." Chapter 14 in
Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records. Salt Lake City:
Ancestry, 1998. Thorough overview of published passenger arrival information.
__ ,and Loretto Dennis Szucs. "Immigration Records."
Chapter 9 in The SOURCE: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, 3rd ed. Provo, Utah:
Ancestry, 2006. Superb discussion of resources and methods for tracing immigrant
ancestors in the United States and country of origin.
Mokotoff, Gary. "Strategies for Using the Ellis Island
Database." FORUM, the journal of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, vol.
13, no. 3 (fall 2001 ): 17-20. Detailed discussion of the strong points and
weaknesses of the Web site of the American Family Immigration History Center.
Additional information and link to www.stevemorse.org available at
www.jewishgen.org.
National Archives Trust Fund Board. Guide to
Genealogical Research in the National Archives, rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: NATF,
2000. Chapter 2, "Passenger Arrivals and Border Crossings," provides a thorough
description of the various kinds of arrival lists and the indexes to them.
\
__ . Immigrant and Passenger Arrivals: A Select
Catalog of National Archives
Microfilm Publications, rev. ed. Washington, D.C.:
NATF, 1991. Roll-by-roll
catalog of microfilmed lists and indexes. Up-dated at
www.archives.gov.
Potter, Constance. "St. Albans Passenger Arrival
Records." Prologue: Journal of the National Archives 22, no. 1 (spring 1990):
90-93. Describes National Archives records and indexes of immigration across the
Canadian border, 1895-1954.
Prechtei-Kiuskens, Claire. "Mexican Border Crossing
Records." NGS Newsmagazine.
"Part 1: How and Why Immigration Records Were
Collected," May/June 1999:
156-159; "Part 2: The Information Collected,"
July/August 1999: 182-183; "Part
3, "Available Microfilm Publications,"
September/October 1999: 278-281.
Smith, Marian L. "The Creation and Destruction of
Ellis Island Immigration Manifests." Prologue, Journal of the National Archives
28, no. 3 (fall 1996): 240-245; and no. 4 (winter 1996): 314-318. In-depth study
of the Immigration Passenger Lists for the port of New York.
__ . "Immigration through Great Lakes Ports of Entry,
1895-1955." Audiotape of lecture, S-148: Repeat Performance
(www.audiotapes.com), 1998.
Tepper, Michael H. American Passenger Arrival Records:
A Guide to the Records of Immigrants Arriving at American Ports by Sail and
Steam, rev. ed. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1993. Thorough overview
of ship lists and other types of records providing immigrant arrival
information. Important bibliography.