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Several Ways to Search Ship
Manifests for your Family's 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.
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