Rediscovering Passenger Lists

source:Ancestry Magazine
11/1/2001 - Archive
November/December 2001 Vol. 19 No. 6
Rediscovering Passenger Lists

Since 1820, over 60 million persons have arrived at more than 100 different ports in the United States, bringing with them unique cultures, histories, and family stories. Their new lives were generally better than the lives they left behind, but in climbing the social ladders of the United States, personal histories began to be obscured. Information about ancestral homeland, occupation, social status, even the family name were often jettisoned to make way for the "new American." Reconstructing that information is now a universal problem for descendants.

Fortunately, the United States (and to a much lesser degree, Canada) has an excellent collection of documents about this pivotal event in history. Passenger lists, the first tangible evidence of many families in America, exist for probably 90 to 95 percent of immigrants. The documents provide immigrants’ names, ages, occupations, and homelands, making it one of the most amazing collections of information ever assembled about this great immigration period.

Few goals in American family history research are as universal as identifying an ancestor’s arrival in North America. Eventually, American researchers come to the end of the trail in North America, or rather the beginning, as they trace their families back in time. When encountering immigrant ancestors, the researcher suddenly comes face-to-face with the need to use and understand the passenger lists of that time period. The following discussion should provide a firm foundation for successful use of this marvelous and often mystifying resource.
History of American Passenger Lists
For about two hundred years, from 1607/20 to 1820, colonists and other immigrants arrived at the shores of North America with few requirements to register their arrival. Most immigrants were citizens of the country to whose colonies they were migrating (e.g., British to English colonies, French to Quebec, Dutch to New Netherlands, Spanish to Florida, etc.). As such, they were not required to document their arrival. The only major exception was the arrival of Germans in Pennsylvania; for some 38,000 adult male Germans, lists of their arrivals from 1727 to 1808 survive.

During and immediately following the American Revolution, immigration to the New World slowed to a trickle. And within a decade after the Revolutionary War, a revolution broke out in France that turned into a major war impacting much of western Europe. Many European ports were blockaded, which obviously limited departures for America. But the defeat of Napoleon and the end of the war in 1815 unleashed a torrent of emigration from Europe, much of it to the United States. More immigrants were arriving than ever before (up to 20,000 per year), but the conditions onboard the ships worsened as shipping companies treated passengers with little regard to health or safety. Alarmed at these situations, the United States government took over jurisdiction of immigration to the United States. In 1819, Congress passed a law regulating the number of passengers, based upon the total tonnage of the ship. Although this did little to improve the living conditions for passengers, the law mandated the keeping of a list of arrivals, which has been a godsend for family historians.

The Bureau of Customs was charged with keeping the passenger lists. Therefore, the lists from 1820 through about 1891 (the ending dates vary by port) are called the "Customs Passenger Lists." The Bureau provided blank forms to the shipping companies, which the captains or their mates prepared onboard. The forms were then submitted to the collector of customs at the port of arrival.

The lists that survived the ravages of time eventually became the custody of the National Archives, where they were microfilmed for preservation and improved access. The law also required that copies and abstracts of the lists be made for the State Department. With the loss of some of the original lists, these copies and/or abstracts are an invaluable source. When the original lists were microfilmed, the National Archives included available copies and abstracts in the microfilms. Thus we have a fairly complete collection of documents that identify more then 18 million persons who arrived in the United States during the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Customs. In 1977, the lists for the five major ports, but not all of the copies, were transferred to the Balch Institute Center for Immigration Research at Temple University, Philadelphia. For the last twenty years, individuals at the center have been transcribing and publishing abstracts of the lists.

Although passengers arrived at about 100 different ports over the years, most ports saw only infrequent traffic. Sometimes just a couple of ships would arrive in a given year. And during the course of these early years, most of the immigration traffic tended to be directed to one of five major ports: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans. Although Philadelphia had been the most popular of these ports during the colonial era, within the first two decades of federal immigration regulation, New York emerged as the preferred port of arrival. By 1850, more immigrants arrived in New York than in all other ports combined.

As pressures grew to regulate immigration, a major new piece of legislation emerged, the Immigration Act of 1891. This act established the Superintendent of Immigration, which later became the Immigration Bureau. Over time, the Immigration Bureau (today the Immigration and Naturalization Service) exerted more and more control over the lists, including their creation, distribution, and retention.

New forms were instituted at different times in different ports depending upon various factors, such as who was in charge of the port. Some ports were immediately regulated by federal immigration officials (in 1891), while other ports were regulated by local officers contracted by federal officials. Typically, any lists created under the authority of the Immigration Bureau are considered Immigration Passenger Lists, even though ports may have begun keeping them at various times.

Virtually all of these later lists survived and were eventually acquired by the National Archives after its creation in 1935. In the 1940s, thousands of bound volumes of these lists (about 14,000 for Ellis Island records alone) were microfilmed. Since the project was completed relatively early in the history of microfilming, the quality is not always good. Studies show that about 6 percent of the lists are difficult or impossible to read, with that number reaching as high as 15 percent for the pre-1902 lists. The later lists were destroyed after microfilming.
Content of Passenger Lists
The 1819 law required that only six items be recorded: 1) name of the passenger, 2) age, 3) gender, 4) occupation, 5) nationality (country of allegiance), and 6) the intended country of destination.

Some lists include detailed information about the passengers, such as their baggage or even if a passenger died during the voyage. However, the law did not require, and the lists did not record, the town from which the immigrants left. This is often a great disappointment to researchers who eventually locate their immigrant relatives in the earlier lists.

In a very few cases, the shipping authorities, apparently copying lists made at the port of departure, included towns or counties in the old country. These may be the last residence of the immigrant, the town of birth, or perhaps some other point on the journey. In these cases, the locations are invaluable in suggesting a place to begin research in the home country. The most notable collection of such lists are arrivals in New York from the port of Bremen, Germany. For some twenty-five years, 25 to 30 percent of the arrival lists included towns of origin in Germany.

While the federal government passed laws dealing with immigration in 1819, 1847, 1848, and 1855, these laws had little effect on the keeping of passenger lists other than to mandate that they be kept. When the Supreme Court decided in 1876 that states could not tax or regulate immigration (since issues of foreign commerce are reserved to the federal government), interest in federal legislation grew. Immigration and passenger acts in 1882 provided the foundation for the later more detailed lists. Indeed, even the 1882 Passenger Act called for lists to include native country and intended local destination (such as the state) in addition to the names, ages, genders, and occupations of passengers. Previous lists had only recorded the country of allegiance, which is not always the native country.

The 1891 law required the lists to report last residence of each alien. Two years later, another act that was designed to improve enforcement of the existing law required more than twice as much information on the passenger lists. Hence, the number of columns on the ships’ manifests had increased from five or six columns on the older lists to twenty-one columns in 1893. For the first time, laws required significant information about the passengers and proscribed the nature of the lists, including the limit of thirty names per page. In addition, passenger arrival lists were to indicate marital status; last residence (supposed to have been added in 1891, but not always done); previous U.S. residence, if any; if joining a relative, that person’s name, address, and relationship; amount of money (thirty dollars was required); condition of health; and social detriments, including history of prison, poorhouse, insanity, and polygamy.

A 1903 law made minor modifications, including the race of each immigrant, but it was the 1906 Naturalization Act with 1907 amendments that required a physical description of the immigrant. The law required place of birth (country and city or town), height in feet and inches, complexion, color of hair and eyes, marks of identification, and name and address of nearest relative in the country from which the alien came.

These acts also established the Immigrant Receiving Station and an inspector who was to have "in his hands a written record of the immigrant he was inspecting and, asking the same questions over again, could compare the oral statements with it." Thus, the lists were generally filled out by the steamship lines on forms provided by the Bureau of Immigration and provided to the inspectors at the receiving stations.

Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing how complete the collection of Customs and Immigration Passenger Lists is. Authorities differ in their opinions regarding the amount of lost lists, but it seems likely that the greater loss would be among the earlier Customs Passenger Lists rather than the later Immigration Passenger Lists. These later lists were maintained under better controls in fewer locations, and were turned over to the National Archives closer to their creation date than the older lists. However, experienced researchers continue to find instances where an immigrant does not appear on the lists, even when specific immigration information is well established.

Within each port, the lists are arranged chronologically by day, and each day by ship. On each ship’s list, there may be a dozen names or more than a thousand. Typically, a small percentage of passengers traveled in first class and cabin class. Often these were citizens, such as tourists and merchants, returning to the United States. Virtually all immigrant aliens traveled steerage class, and their names are listed in no particular order, although families are usually listed together.
Accessing Passenger Lists
Over the years, all known passenger lists (both Customs and Immigration lists) have been microfilmed by the National Archives. Even new lists as they are found are microfilmed. These films are then available to researchers through the branches of the National Archives, as well as the Family History Library and the centers the library supports. Commercial firms also sell or rent the passenger list films to individuals and libraries.

Generally the microfilmed passenger lists are as complete as possible for the dates indicated. However, occasionally a list may be missing for a ship that is known to have arrived at a specific port. Lists may have been lost before the State Department or the Bureau of Immigration gave them to the National Archives, or they may have never made it to the respective government offices. Sometimes transcripts or quarterly abstracts of the lists are used as substitutes for the microfilm copy.

The incredible detail on the later passenger lists (after 1891) means that much information is crammed onto these lists, which often makes them hard to read on the microfilm. This problem is sometimes magnified by the poor quality of the microfilms, many of which were filmed in the 1940s.

Since the later lists (by 1908) have between twenty-one and twenty-seven columns, the information for each immigrant stretches over two facing pages, usually with thirty lines to a page. Each page is given a "group" number (like a page number) and is usually stamped with large numerals. Aliens who were detained at the receiving station for even a few hours or a couple of days, or who were refused entry, are listed a second time on separate sheets, usually at the end of each ship’s manifest.

With thousands of persons arriving each day in some ports, researchers must know the exact date of arrival, as well as the name of the ship. Most families know very little about when their immigrant ancestor arrived, and certainly not the day of arrival. Most also do not know the ship’s name. If they are lucky, they know the port of arrival; but to locate an immigrant on a ship’s list, researchers almost always need an index. Fortunately, almost all Immigrant Passenger Lists (post 1891) have been indexed. The exceptions are the Seattle lists, which were only found in the last twenty years or so, and some smaller ports that only had a handful of lists.

The earlier Customs Passenger Lists are also indexed for all of the ports for which the lists exist, with one very key exception. The index for the largest port, New York, is very incomplete. In fact, the New York index only indexes the copies (not the originals) of the arrivals from 1820 through 1846. There is no index to New York arrivals from 1847 through 1896. However, new electronic databases are beginning to change even this situation. [See John Colletta’s article on page 29 for more information.]

Most passenger lists indexes are card-style Soundex indexes created by the WPA. They work much like the popular census Soundexes for 1800, 1900, and 1920, with one significant exception. Soundex cards are generally created for each individual immigrant, not just each family (as with the census Soundex). This greatly increases the chances of locating an immigrant if the researcher knows several family members who may have arrived together. The format on the card varies with each port, and often within the index for that port. For most ports, the card is pre-printed with blanks for the passenger’s name, age, country, ship name, date of arrival, and other information. However, the cards for New York arrivals after about 1910 have much less information. They include just the name, age, gender, and reference numbers.

On all cards where the arrival date is not given, the card will have three numbers: the volume of the passenger list, the group (like a page number), and the list number. The list number is the line (usually 1 thru 30) where the immigrant appears on the specific group/page.

Some port indexes are alphabetical card indexes, which are generally easier to use because they are filed strictly by the spelling of the surname, and then by the given name. But this introduces a problem. Often the immigrant’s surname was spelled differently than it is today. When using such indexes, be sure to check all possible spellings. Also, sometimes infants do not have their own index card, so be sure to look for all known family members.

For most ports, separate indexes exist for the earlier Customs Lists and the later Immigration Lists. For other ports, the indexes may cover years from both collections. One other index must be mentioned, as it includes the available lists from the minor ports, as well as some entries from the major ports, except New York. Supplemental Index to Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Atlantic and Gulf Coast Ports (excluding New York) 1820—1874 is an index to the copies and abstracts filed with the National Archives, but not to the original lists. Thus it provides some coverage for all ports through its dates, but it is usually used after the port-specific indexes have been searched.
Canadian Passenger Lists
Immigration to Canada began with French settlements in 1605 and 1608 and has mirrored immigration to the United States in form and scope (origins of immigrants), if not in numbers. Still, millions of Europeans and others settled in Canada, and many of these later found their way to the United States.

Immigrants to Canada who came by ship rather than overland from the United States generally arrived at the port of Quebec or in Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, passenger lists were not kept as early in Canada as they were in the United States. The earliest lists for Quebec date from 1865, and Halifax begins in 1881. Other ports, such as St. John, New Brunswick, begin in 1900, while records for Victoria, on the west coast, begin in 1905.

In form and substance, the existing lists are similar to those found in the United States at about the same time. Earlier lists seldom tell more than the name, age, occupation, and country of origin for the immigrants. While the lists through 1919 are available from the Public Archives of Canada, there are virtually no indexes. Except for a few early years of Quebec arrivals, researchers will need to determine the date of arrival to find an immigrant.

Many persons moved back and forth from the United States to Canada, and from Canada to the United States, even before the loyalists of the American Revolution. However, migrations between the two neighboring countries were not officially documented until 1895, when the United States began keeping border crossing records. These records function like passenger lists, and are available on microfilm from the National Archives.
Colonial Arrivals
As indicated earlier, most colonial arrivals were not formally documented on ship passenger lists. However, don’t give up hope of identifying an immigrant from America’s earliest history. Many documents exist that identify immigrants, including headrights, freemen lists, local histories, naturalizations, church records, and even some stray passenger lists (both arriving in America and departing from Europe).

Wherever such records have been found, they have almost always been published in books or periodicals. This makes them easier to access, but a major indexing project over the past twenty years has also made the names in these lists easy to find. Virtually all published records identifying immigrants are indexed in P. William Filby’s Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981-). Although this index and its annual supplements indexes any published lists with arrival dates through 1900, it is particularly useful for pre-1820 immigration, which is the most difficult to document. Available at most major research libraries and on CD-ROM from Family Tree Maker, it is an excellent way to begin a search for colonial and other early immigrants.
Conclusion
Using passenger lists with success need not be a mystery. Almost all of them survive and can be searched using indexes on microfilm. Family and other sources will usually determine the time period that an immigrant arrived, and sometimes even the port. The indexes are arranged by port, so even if you don’t know which port, you can search the five largest ports fairly easily. A growing number of lists are now available electronically, most notably the Ellis Island arrivals for a third of a century. For information on those lists, please review John Colletta’s article on page 31. In whatever way you find your immigrant ancestors, enjoy the hunt, and learn all about their occupations, where they came from, and their travel companions. It’s your family’s history.

Till we meet again -Regards - edmondsallan