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. 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.
Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com
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.our-family-trees.co.uk
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