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