Several Ways to Search
Ship Manifests for your Family's History by
Paul Duxbury and Kevin Cook
Before the
days of airplane travel, emigrants typically
left their countries of origin on ships and
braved long and difficult journeys across the
ocean. Finding evidence of an ancestor's
journey to a new world through passenger
lists and ship manifests can be a thrilling
experience for anyone who is interested in
their family history.
Before
the days of airplane travel, emigrants
typically left their countries of origin on
ships and braved long and difficult journeys
across the ocean. Finding evidence of an
ancestor's journey to a new world through
passenger lists and ship manifests can be a
thrilling experience for anyone who is
interested in their family history. Such
valuable documents, kept by most shipping
companies across the world, can be incredibly
difficult to search, however, leading
genealogists to spend countless hours in
fruitless inquiry. Many of the lists, for
instance, have not been put into indexes and
lay moldering in some obscure or unreachable
archive. At other times, even when
genealogists do find their ancestors on a
ship manifest, only their name and country of
departure are listed; no other exciting
information, such as birth date, country of
origin, or occupation, is included. Such
warnings aside, however, there are ways
genealogists can increase their chance of
success in finding their ancestors on
passenger lists.
First, remember that your ancestors may have
been included on a number of lists, not just
the ones made upon arrival in their new
country. Lists were made when they first got
on the ship and whenever they stopped along
the way. Newspapers and organizations that
may have paid for their journey, such as aid
societies, would also have kept lists. Even
passport applications and naturalization
papers can provide valuable clues to your
ancestor's journey.
After becoming aware of the variety of places
in which you can look for your ancestors, try
and keep the time period in which they
arrived in consideration. Passenger lists
made for immigrants arriving in America
before 1820, for example, are particularly
difficult to search for because they were not
standardized or carefully preserved and
either do not exist anymore or are extremely
difficult to find. The search for immigrants
arriving between 1820 and 1891 is slightly
less difficult but information is still
limited. Finally, in 1891, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service came into
existence in the United States, and passenger
lists were greatly improved, becoming more
reliable, informative and well-preserved.
Before you begin searching passenger lists,
you need to know your ancestor's complete and
original name, the date of his arrival in
America, and the port at which he arrived. It
is also helpful to know his age; the port
from which he departed; his country of
origin; his ultimate destination in the
United States; and the names of his ship or
of any fellow travelers. You can find this
information through a piece memorabilia, such
as a letter or ticket; through previously
researched family history; through census
records, which are available on the internet
and on purchasable computer programs; through
naturalization records, which are actually
more informative than passenger lists for
immigrants arriving after 1906; and through
passport records, if your ancestor applied
for one to visit his country of origin.
If you discover that your ancestor arrived
before 1820, there is no centralized place to
search for passenger lists. Many ships did
keep lists, which they left at the ports of
arrival, but since the government did not
require these lists to be kept or saved, they
were lost, destroyed, or scattered in
different libraries or private collections.
Many of the surviving lists have been
published on the web or in books, so these
are the best places to search. Newspapers
from the time which have been microfilmed are
also valuable resources. Finally, the
government does have records in the national
archives for arrivals in New York from 1789
to 1919, in New Orleans from 1813 to 1819,
and in Philadelphia from 1800 to 1819.
If your ancestor arrived after 1820, then
your main job will be in consulting the
variety of resources available. Customs
Passenger Lists, compiled by ship captains
from 1820 to around 1891 and indexes for
these lists can be found at the National
Archives; in libraries, including the
comprehensive genealogical archives of the
Church of Latter Day Saints; online in
images, transcripts, and indexes; on
purchasable CD-ROMs; and in books. The
archives and other resources contain notable
gaps in information and errors, so it is best
to search in a variety of indexes.
Beginning around 1891, Immigration Passenger
Lists replaced Customs Passenger Lists due to
the flood of immigrants to the United States
and the establishment of a Superintendent of
Immigration. Immigration Passenger Lists are
much more detailed and two pages long by
1906. They can be found in the National
Archives, in the Latter Day Saints library,
on the Ellis Island on-line database, and on
other on-line sites. Once again, errors were
made in microfilming lists and a variety of
resources should be consulted. In the end,
genealogy is like a scavenger hunt where you
must use the clues provided to you and search
in a variety of places before you find what
you are looking for.
About the Authors
Paul Duxbury and Kevin Cook own
http://www.amateur-genealogist.com and
http://www.our-family-trees.co.uk two of the
leading Genealogy Websites. In addition Paul
owns a wide range of exciting websites which
can be viewed at
http://www.our-family-trees.co.uk