Immigration

The up-to-date copy of this post will be maintained here: http://genweblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/immigration-and-emigration.html

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Emigration & Immigration Research Outline at http://www.familysearch.org/: http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/Rg/guide/Germany14.asp#emigration_and_immigration

Ellis Island: http://ellisisland.org/ has the records online for 1892-1924. 22 million immigrants, passengers, and crew members came through Ellis Island and the Port of New York. Use Stephen Morse's forms to search if you can't find them with the standard search engine. These sites are free and open to all.

NEW! I've just found about a wonderful way to extend your use of the EllisIsland.org site. Megan Smolenyak says that to the left of the certificate, at the bottom of the menu are "View Annotations" and "Create an Annotation." She says:

If you click on "View Annotations," you'll find yourself in the Community Archives, which includes the annotation I contributed. By clicking on my name, you'll see a number of additional details I entered.... All of these are pre-set fields, so all you have to do is a little typing.

At this point, there is no field for your e-mail address, so I suggest making use of the fields you would otherwise leave empty to provide this information. For instance, I used the "religious
community" field to indicate how I could be contacted.

Eventually, the annotations themselves will be made directly searchable. That's not the case at present, but anyone who does a conventional search for the passenger arrival records of the same
people as you can find your notes appended.

   Stephen Morse's One-Step Ellis Island Search Forms: http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/eidb/intro.html

Megan Smolenyak's case history using the EIDB - Finding Knute Rockne in the Ellis Island Database: http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/8576.asp?o_iid=831&o_lid=831

Before Ellis Island, there was Castle Garden. The records from 1830-1892 are now searchable; 10 million records: http://www.castlegarden.org/

The Massachusetts Archives is indexing a million immigrants who came through Boston 1848-1891: http://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/arcsrch/PassengerManifestSearchContents.html

Finding Passenger Lists 1820-1940s (arrivals at US Ports): http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/passengers.html

TheShipsList: http://www.theshipslist.com/

Passenger Ship Arrivals: http://www.daddezio.com/genealogy/ships/

CIMO - Cimorelli Immigration Manifests Online: http://www.cimorelli.com/safe/shipmenu.htm

Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG): http://www.immigrantships.net/
   More than 5,000 ships' passenger lists, citing over 1/2 million passenger arrivals.

NARA - Immigration Records (Ship Passenger Arrival Records): http://www.archives.gov/research_room/genealogy/research_topics/immigration.html

Finding Irish - the Missing Friends database: http://infowanted.bc.edu/

The St. Louis Naturalization Index Cards 1816-1906: http://stlgs.org/natsearch.aspx

The Alsachat.net project has a great collection of Immigration links on their Cool Links system: http://sdrescher.net/php/linkdex/index.php?cat=emigration
   Be sure to check the subcategories, too: Harbors, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, Russia, USA

Emigration from/through Bremen and Bremerhaven 1820-1939 - Deutsche Auswanderer-Datenbank (DAD): http://www.deutsche-auswanderer-datenbank.de/enframeset.htm

Hamburg passenger list - 1872: http://www.horlacher.org/germany/hamburg/index.html
   All Hamburg departures alpha by surname. Done by LDS as a trial, for a year of high emigration.

Die Maus - Familienforschung in Bremen: http://www.genealogienetz.de/vereine/maus/index_e.htm

French Emigration Indexes: http://valoriez.blogspot.com/2004/07/french-emigration-indexes.html

Olive Tree's Ship Passenger Lists: http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/

Immigration & Ships Passenger Lists Research Guide: http://home.att.net/%7Earnielang/shipgide.html

Passenger Lists on the Internet: http://members.aol.com/rprost/passenger.html

Ship Samuel Intro Page: http://members.aol.com/ShipSamuel/

Mariners Museum in Newport News, VA (ship photos): http://www.mariner.org/

British National Maritime Museum in Greenwich: http://www.nmm.ac.uk

Firstmom: http://khuish.tripod.com/ships.htm

Emigration / Ship Lists and Resources: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/5978/Emigration.html

Passenger List for the Winthrop Fleet of 1630 (11 ships); the Lyon 1632; the Griffin, 1634; the Planter, 1635; the Angel Gabriel, 1635 (partial); the Confidence, 1638; the Martin, 1638: http://members.aol.com/dcurtin1/gene/passent.htm

Ship Passenger Lists: Immigrants from Alsace (and Elsewhwere) to America 1820-1850: http://members.cox.net/smithgen/sources/ships/ships18201850.htm

Jacques de Guise's Virtual Tour on Emigration (emphasis on emigration from the Alsace): http://www.ceg-cgr-eig.blogspot.com/

Migrations.org - searchable database that collects and analyzes migration data: http://migrations.org/

Immigrant Ancestors Project: http://immigrants.byu.edu/DesktopDefault.aspx

Work in progress, sponsored by Brigham Young University's Center for Family History and Genealogy, uses emigration records in emigrant home countries to locate the birthplaces of immigrants which are missing on many port records and naturalization documents in arrival countries. Volunteers working with scholars and researchers at Brigham Young University are creating a database of millions of immigrants based on these emigration records. Available in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Portugues, and French.

Books - They Came In Ships: A Guide to Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record by John P. Colletta, PH.D. Salt Lake City: Ancestry, Third Edition, 2002. ISBN 091648937X.

Queens of the Western Ocean by Carl C. Cutler. History of ship-building and its evolution in the United States. Tables of specific ships, captains (masters), dates and ports of arrival.


Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. - Bernard Berenson