Locating Family Members who immigrated to America
Centuries ago, the first of hundreds of
thousands of immigrants arrived in America. Over the years, they have
appeared at America's doorstep for a variety of reasons. In the early days
of the sixteen hundreds, they came with a sense of exploration and a hope
for a better life. That hope carries over into America's immigrants even
today. As time passed, people started coming for very different reasons.
Many had farms destroyed in other countries and came to America with the
hope to find new farms. Other came with the hope of getting an education
or to find a better paying job to support their families. Still others
came to get those better jobs so they could send money back to their home
countries. With the world wars, many immigrants arrived in America to
escape the oppression of horrible government regimes. Whatever the reason,
whatever the time, this culture of immigration has made America a
wonderful melting pot of cultures. It can, though, make it immensely
difficult to locate family members who immigrated to America because of
the sheer numbers of immigrants that have arrived over the past three
centuries.
By the 1820s, American immigration numbers began to skyrocket to over ten
thousand. Prior to this era, immigration was documented, but poorly. As a
result, it can be a much more difficult task to track family members who
immigrated to America before eighteen twenty. After that year, immigration
officials began to insert more protocols into the system to ensure
immigrants were tracked appropriately. By eighteen seventy, America was
seeing so many immigrants, more laws were passed to limit the numbers of
foreign born people into the country. As a result, any family members who
came in after that time were more carefully documented, making it even
easier to track them down. By the nineteen twenties, more quotas were put
into place, as were more tracking regulations. All of these laws have made
it easier and easier to find your family's immigrants.
When you get ready to start your search, a date is
helpful, but not necessary. There are several ways you can go about
locating family members who immigrated to America. You can start by using
a paid service. There are a number of these on the internet. You simply
choose a service you like, offer them all of the information you have, and
let them handle the tracking process for you. This can be a bit costly,
but in the end, it can save you a lot of time and hassle.
If you are interested in handling the research yourself, you can start by
examining passenger manifests to ships that would have carried immigrants.
Again, a date here is helpful, but not completely necessary. A port of
arrival is also helpful. Without these two things, you are going to spend
an extensive amount of time shooting in the dark for the right passenger
manifest. Some of the services that provide these indexes require payment.
Others provide the service for free. Both the internet and your local
library will be invaluable sources as you begin your search for passenger
lists.
Another important thing you can do in your search to track your family
immigrants is network with others. Try enlisting the help of other
interested family members. Two heads are always better than one when you
are attempting to deal with this much data. There are also literally
hundreds of genealogy bulletin boards on the internet that you can consult
for help. Simply post a query and wait for others to respond. If you are
uncomfortable posting a query to a website, you can try posting a query in
a genealogy magazine. There are several reputable publications that can
help you track the family members you need to find.
One final way to attempt to track your family members is to look at
indices that have already been compiled. The LDS family research center is
one of the largest genealogical libraries in the world with thousands of
family trees and extensive information already compiled. There are also a
number of other databases available on the internet for your searching
purposes. Some require a fee, others are completely free.
Searching can be a difficult process, but finally locating family members
who immigrated to America can be intensely useful to your family history
About the Authors
Paul Duxbury and Kevin Cook own www.amateur-genealogist.com and
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 www.paulduxbury.com
