Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide To Published
Sources
Introduction
A surge of interest in the subject
of immigration--living conditions and political climate in the Old
World, embarkation, the voyage, arrival in the new country, being
"processed" at immigration stations, and making an adjustment to
life in America--was sparked during the nation's bicentennial in
1976, the publication of Alex Haley's Roots, and by
the highly successful restoration efforts at two outstanding historic
sites: the Statue of Liberty, unveiled in 1986, and the Ellis
Island Immigration Museum which opened in 1990. This latter
facility, well known as an immigration station, was in operation
for over half a century from 1892 to 1954. These two significant
landmarks attracted the attention of millions of viewers throughout
the nation during a particularly memorable televised celebration
in New York City on the Fourth of July 1986. One result of all this
attention is that Americans in all walks of life are pursuing their
family roots in original documents, published books and journals,
CD-ROMS, online data bases, and through the myriad avenues available
on the Internet.
Original Ship Passenger Lists
In the study of immigration history, ship passenger lists have
become increasingly important sources of data for historians, demographers,
biographers, and genealogists. This is particularly true in the
United States where forebears of all but native Americans arrived
by ship from colonial times until the advent and popularity of
air
travel. Between the years 1607 and 1920, it is estimated that over
thirty million immigrants came to these shores; during the past
two centuries over half of them arrived through the port of New
York. In studying immigrant arrivals other official ports of entry
should not be overlooked, and a list of their locations is provided
in the Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives.
Revised edition. (Washington: National
Archives and Records Service, 1985), pp. 41-59. Although a number
of passenger lists have survived from the colonial period through
the early part of the nineteenth century, there was no uniform code
or system or even requirement to document incoming passengers until
after the War of 1812. On March 2, 1819, the U.S. Congress passed
an Act Regulating Passenger Vessels (ch. 46, 3 Stat., 489) designed
to protect passengers arriving from foreign ports against overcrowding
and inadequate provisions, as well as to provide statistical data
on foreign trade. Section 5 of this legislation required masters
of ships to file with the district collector of customs a manifest
(or list) of all passengers who boarded at a foreign port. It was
to include each passenger's name, age, sex, and occupation; the
country to which he or she belonged; the country of which he or
she intended to become an inhabitant; and a list of deaths that
occurred during the voyage.
On March 3, 1853, Congress passed legislation designated an Act
to Regulate the Carriage of Passengers in Steamships and Other vessels
(ch. 213, 10 Stat., 715). In addition to requirements covered by
the Act of 1819, it specified the requirements for health and safety,
and masters of the ships were to indicate the class in which each
passenger traveled--cabin or steerage.
Throughout the following decade as immigration of foreign laborers
was encouraged, additional legislation was passed to protect their
rights. Beginning in the 1870s, however, a backlash developed against
the importation of contract labor and restrictive legislation was
passed excluding people who were considered undesirable, such as
lunatics, idiots, the indigent, and those convicted of political
offenses. As additional restrictions were enacted during the twentieth
century, significantly more data were collected about each immigrant
who was admitted into the United States.
Documents created under these and other congressional acts that
have particular significance for researchers are the Customs Passenger
Lists of 1820-1905 and the Immigration Passenger Lists of 1883-1945.
Some indexes for these lists are available at the National
Archives and Records Administration, Archives I, 8th Street and Pennsylvania
Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20408. In addition, the archives has
a few baggage lists and cargo manifests that name passengers as
early as 1798, but they are fragmentary. A discussion of these surviving
lists, transcripts and copies, the ports for which they were available,
and their limitations and significance for researchers is found
in the reference work mentioned above, Guide to Genealogical Research
in the National Archives, pp. 41-59.
No federal government agency required information about people
entering the United States overland from Canada and Mexico until
Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1891 (ch. 551, 26 Stat.,
1084). In addition to excluding those suffering from "loathsome
or contagious diseases," the law provided for medical examinations
at what became the first United States immigration inspection stations
along the Canadian border. The reason for this became obvious when
it was acknowledged that approximately forty percent of the foreign
passengers arriving in Canada were bound for the United States.
In 1909, District 1 of the U.S. Immigration Service was established
at Montreal and encompassed the entire Canadian border. The headquarters
were later moved to St. Albans, Vermont, where the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) microfilmed its five series of immigrant
records and Soundex Indexes covering the period 1895 to 1954. That
material is now available as a microfilm publication of the National
Archives and Records Administration (address above).
After the National Archives microfilmed many of its passenger manifests
in 1978, the originals were loaned to Temple University in Philadelphia
for the purpose of compiling statistics on the social, economic,
and genetic aspects of immigration, a project directed by Dr. Ira
A. Glazier. Subsequently, this effort became a joint project of
the newly established Temple-Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies
(now the Balch Institute
for Ethnic Studies) where storage facilities were available
for the thousands of large bound volumes weighing approximately
eleven tons.
Published Passenger Lists
In transcribing data from the above-mentioned passenger lists into
a computer data base, Dr. Glazier acceded to a request that his
team include information to benefit those involved in research concerning
immigration and immigrant ancestors. The initial effort was a computerized
list of Irish passengers published as The Famine Immigrants:
Lists of Irish Immigrants Arriving at the Port of New York, 1846-1851 (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1983-86), currently being expanded
to cover English, Welsh, and Scottish immigrants from 1880-1914.
The subsequent major undertakings in this project are Germans
to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, 1850-1893 (Wilmington,
Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1988- ); Italians to America,
1880-1899 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1992- ); and Migration
from the Russian Empire. Lists of Passengers Arriving at the Port
of
New York, 1875-1914 (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1995- ).
While this labor-intensive work is in progress, it is important
to note that under no circumstances can staff members at the Temple-Balch
Center conduct any research or respond to any questions about individuals
whose names may appear on the original manifests.
A great many passenger lists, created both before and after passage
of the act of 1819, have been published in a wide variety of books,
journal articles, and special publications. An early attempt to
locate them and to index the ships' names was made in 1938 by Harold
Lancour, who compiled A Bibliography of Ship Passenger Lists,
1538-1825 containing about 98 sources; a third edition, including some 243
sources, was revised and enlarged by Richard J. Wolfe (New York:
New York Public Library, 1963).
It is well for researchers to be aware of the companion volume
that continues Lancour's work compiled by P. William Filby: Passenger
and Immigration Lists Bibliography, 1538-1900, Being a Guide to
Published Lists of Arrivals in the United States and Canada, 2nd
edition (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1988). This contains over 2,550
sources including hundreds of lists not yet published in the Passenger
and Immigration Lists Index, cited below. As a major reference work,
the Bibliography is available in many research libraries, and therefore
no attempt was made to duplicate it for this reference guide. To
date, unfortunately, there is no later edition of the Bibliography.
Beginning in the 1980s, P. William Filby and Mary K. Meyer launched
a project to consolidate all known published passenger and naturalization
lists, as well as other lists of American residents of foreign birth,
and to edit a master index of names from these lists. The result
was a three-volume publication, Passenger and Immigration
Lists Index. A Guide to Published Arrival Records of About 500,000
Passengers
Who Came to the United States and Canada in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth,
and Nineteenth Centuries (Detroit, Gale Research Co., 1981); since
1982 a supplement of approximately 125,000 names has been issued
annually. Combined, these volumes currently contain over two and
a quarter million names taken from hundreds of publications. The
editor's intention is to incorporate small passenger lists from
such sources as journal articles and books. Hence, the names from
a very large series such as Germans to America are not included.
Twentieth-century Passenger Lists
Currently, with fiftieth anniversary ceremonies commemorating World
War II fresh in the minds of so many veterans and their families,
there is a budding interest in relatively recent arrivals in the
United States. This is a direct result of two significant pieces
of federal legislation. In 1945 Congress passed the so-called War
Brides Act to expedite the admission of foreign-born spouses and
children of United States armed forces personnel (ch. 289, 61 Stat.,
401). Three years later, in 1948, Congress passed the Displaced
Persons Act, authorizing the admission of 400,000 refugees from
war-torn Europe for a period of four years, 1948-1952 (ch. 647,
62 Stat., 1009). For an up-to-date list of microfilmed Passenger
Arrival Records, 1882-1957 (ship), and Passenger Arrival Lists,
1929-1945 (air), at the National Archives, see the Guide to Federal
Records in the National Archives of the United States (Washington,
DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1995), 85.3.1
and 85.3.2. [CD3026 1996.]
For those seeking shipping company records of passengers from Europe
who embarked for North America from the port of Rotterdam during
the first four decades of the twentieth century, a new 272-microfiche
publication may be of value: Passenger Lists of the Holland-American
Line, 1900-1940 (Lisse, The Netherlands: Municipal Archives of Rotterdam
and MMF Publications, 1995). Included among the passengers are many
refugees who left their homes during the early phase of World War
II in Europe, before the United States became involved in the fighting.
In the District of Columbia this publication is available at the
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, DC 20024-2150.
Interest in immigrant ancestors has gone far beyond finding names
on ship passenger lists. Today's researcher is often keen to discover
motivations for leaving the mother country, to find first-hand descriptions
of the crossing, to ferret out details about particular immigrant
ships and the rigors of being "processed" by immigration authorities,
to study conditions encountered during early years in the New World,
to learn reasons for the settlement of various ethnic groups in
particular places throughout the country, and to absorb first-hand
accounts of newly settled immigrants. This guide provides an introduction
to the type and variety of books available concerning these topics,
both recent publications and reprints of some earlier works, as
well as a list of some useful subject headings.
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