Those who know me would never describe me as well traveled. I’ve left the country a handful of times and when the kids were young, family road trips, but my very favorite vacation destination is home. If you’re a homebody like me, you understand the comfort of a familiar bed each night. That’s not to say I’m not adventurous. You will find a well-worn path from the front porch to my vegetable garden in the summer and a well-worn carpet where I make the long journey from the kitchen teapot to my home office daily. This could explain my obsession with passenger records. Like a really good book, they whisk me away to different worlds without having to pack a bag. Win-win.
Almost every American family history begins with the story of an immigrant. More than 100 million Americans have ancestors who immigrated through Ellis Island or the previous station, Castle Garden. Who was the first immigrant from your family to arrive? When did they arrive? Where did they come from? Did your immigrant ancestors land in New York or did they arrive through a port in Boston, New Orleans or Philadelphia? These are the first questions a family historian will need to explore when starting to build their family tree. The answers matter because it determines where to start your record search. Fortunately, the immigrant journey generated a wealth of records.
These “Passenger Arrival Records or Ship Manifests” are among the most prized records documenting an ancestor’s immigration. An early passenger list typically includes ship name, passenger names and ages, ports of arrival and departure including dates, and country of origin. But by the 20th century, they included even more details such as nationality and town of origin, age and physical description, profession, name of family members left behind, name and address of relatives they are joining in the U.S. and how their passage was paid.
Between 1790 and 1820, an estimated 6,000 people freely immigrated to the U.S. each year. They traveled on ships that were often dangerously overcrowded and without a thought for the passengers’ health. Starting in 1820, to ensure safer conditions, ship captains were required to provide passenger lists to U.S. customs officials, a move that would make future genealogists very happy.
In the 1850s, New York decided to create a more “protective landing” for the weary travelers, creating an Emigrant Landing Depot at Castle Garden which opened to immigrants in 1855. During the next 35 years, millions of people passed through Castle Garden. But in 1890, the federal government took over the immigration process at Castle Garden and closed the facility due to safety concerns. A new facility, Ellis Island Immigration Station, opened in 1892 and ushered in a massive wave of migration to our country.
Useful websites for searching your ancestor’s passenger records include:
Libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger — holds the Ellis Island database of more than 65 million records.
Familysearch.org — offers almost 200 related databases; not all are searchable so you may need to browse the collections for your ancestor.
Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac.gc.ca) — enables you to search Canadian resources if your ancestor arrived in Canada and traveled overland to the U.S.
Ancestry.com — this one is subscription based but offers more than 500 immigration-focused databases from around the world.
I love to peruse these records, seeing each name or family as a story waiting to be written. But nothing quite matches the emotional thrill of finding the record of your own ancestor’s arrival in America. It’s a glimpse into their hardships and hopes as they left everything and everyone familiar behind to build a new life in a strange place.
I treasure the many passenger lists I’ve uncovered, such as my paternal grandfather’s ship manifest which shows him traveling with his brother-in-law’s family including six children under the age of 12 and that he made the journey with $8.67, the equivalent of about $290 today. These are the gems that make the time and effort worthwhile.
Documenting your own ancestor’s journey to America can be one of the most rewarding finds and a great way to start. Happy hunting!