Rebecca: Hello, I’m Rebecca Crawford, and I’m an archives specialist at the National
Archives and Records Administration.
Katherine: And I’m Katherine Vollen, and I’m also an archives specialist at the National
Archives and Records Administration.
And today we’re going to be looking at immigration records.
Rebecca: Part of our immigration records, we have records of U.S. Customs Service that
are part of Record Group 36.
They’re going to cover the time period 1820 to 1890 with the exception of Philadelphia
which will start in 1800.
We will also look at some examples from the Immigration and Naturalization Service which
are part of Record Group 85.
They’re going to range from 1891 to 1957.
On the screen you’ll see a list of the major ports that we have relating to immigration.
Within those ports, you’ll see records for the port of Philadelphia which range from
1800 to 1952, for the port of New York from 1820 to 1957, Baltimore for 1820 to 1957,
New Orleans from 1820 to 1952, and San Francisco from 1882 to 1957.
We also have some records for our border crossings here at the National Archives.
So, if your ancestors crossed the border from Canada into the United States, you’re going
to look at the port of St. Alban’s.
Those records will start in 1895 and go through 1954.
If you have an immigrant ancestor that came from the border from Mexico, then you’re
going to be looking at the Mexican border crossings.
Those records will start about 1903 and run to about 1955.
Katherine: Now, the type of information that you can find in the immigration records is
going to vary over time.
But all of the immigration records, both the Customs and INS records, will include the
name of the ship, the name of the ship’s master, the port of arrival and embarkation,
and also the date of departure and the date of arrival.
The kind of thing that you’ll be looking for when you do genealogy research, the early
Customs records are going to include the name of the individual, their age, their occupation,
country of origin, and destination.
Now, as I said, these vary and they’re going to be different over time.
And this is a really early record into Philadelphia.
This is the Brig Experiment coming in 1809.
And if you take a look, you see all the damage.
You’ve got holes.
You’ve got tape it looks like.
This record is not in good shape.
These were actually stored on the docks before they were turned over to us.
So, they were exposed to water, other elements, vermin, rats could get at these things.
So, we’re lucky we actually have what we do have.
But, this is actually mostly a cargo list.
So, up here, this is all cargo, and the passengers are down at the bottom.
So, you’ll see there are fourteen boxes of linen, one chest of glass, one chest of
ceiling wax.
And for passengers, we have an example of Henry Vogt and his wife and three children.
Now, the rest of the family’s names are not listed.
So, all we know is Henry Vogt had a wife, and he had three children that came with him.
We don’t know their names, but we do know that they were carrying one trunk and some
number bags of bedding.
The number is not there.
By 1846, we see a little more information.
This is the Brig Nautilus arriving in New Orleans in 1846.
There’s no cargo listed on this, but this is the entire passenger list.
There are only seven things listed.
We have a man named Galtier, no first name listed.
But, he is 36 years old.
He is a clergyman from France, and he is intending to settle in the United States.
Now, there’s a column on the right side of the page that says number that have died
on the voyage.
And, when you start seeing columns with questions like that, you know that the government is
trying to track something.
And, in this case, they’re trying to track how many people died on the voyage.
And, we see that one person died, and he’s listed down here.
Matthew, again I don’t know if this is his first name or his last name, but he died during
the passage.
And, this is 1886, the Nova Scotian arriving in Baltimore.
And, this is a longer manifest.
This is actually page six of a six-page manifest.
So, you can see with these numbers down here, there were 221 passengers and, in this case,
we get the individual’s name, their age, their sex, their occupation, the country they’re
coming from, state or town to which they’re going, and again it asks if anyone died on
the voyage, and it also asks what section of the ship they were in.
And, these people were divided into female steerage and male steerage.
This entire ship seemed to be in steerage.
So, we see here Mary Calleghan.
She was 17 years old.
She was a domestic servant from Ireland, and she was going to Chicago, Illinois.
Now, I mentioned again we had the question “Did anybody die on the voyage?”
Down here, we have Maria and Pete Housen or Paulsen.
It actually says Housen or Paulsen.
Since this information was taken down orally, it’s very possible that the person providing
the information had an accent, and the person taking it down just couldn’t understand
if it was Housen or Paulsen.
So, they wrote both.
They were both born at sea on August 10th.
And on August 12th, Maria died, and Pete died on August 17th.
So, they were less than a week old, and they both died.
Rebecca: Now, we’ve looked at what we can find on the earlier passenger manifests.
On the later passenger manifests, you’re going to get more information.
With these records, you can get the name of the individual, names of any traveling companions,
the age and personal description of each person traveling, their occupation, their last residence,
the name and address of relatives they’re going to join, whether they can read or write,
the amount of money they are carrying, and you can also find out whether or not they
were a polygamist or an anarchist.
This is an example of a passenger list for the S.S.
Majestic which arrived into the port of New York on March 27, 1923.
As you can see, this manifest is nicely typed.
A lot of the manifests will not be and are very difficult to read.
But, you’ll also notice that at the top of this list, it is called “The List of
United States Citizens.”
And sometimes you will see that the lists will be separate.
So, sometimes you’ll have a list of aliens, and sometimes you’ll have a list of citizens,
and sometimes they’ll be mingled in together.
On this particular list, you have the names of each passenger along with their age, their
sex, their marital status, where they were living.
You also have a column that’s filled in with a bunch of handwritten notations.
These are going to the passport numbers for each of these individuals.
So, it could lead you to another source of information that we have at the National Archives.
Down at the bottom towards the end, you’ll have an individual.
His name is Seth Van Slaars.
You’ll find out that he is 21 years old.
He is a male.
He is married.
He has U.S. passport number of 2-4-1-4-6-9, and his address is listed as T.C. and Son,
New York.
And, upon further investigation, it seems that T.C.
Son in New York is actually the name of a travel agency.
Katherine: Thomas Cook and Son Rebecca: This passenger list here is for the
S.S.
Rotterdam which arrived into New York City on August 17, 1921.
This one, instead of being a list of U.S. citizens, it’s actually a list of aliens
and it tells you that at the very top of the page.
And it gives you a whole lot of information about the passengers.
Not only do you have page one, but you’re going to have a second page to this manifest
which will give you even more information about each passenger.
One of the people aboard this ship is Jacob Burger.
He’s 25 years old.
He is married.
He is a butcher.
He can read, and he can write.
He was born in Rotterdam, and his last permanent residence is in New Jersey.
It also gives the address of his father who still lives in Rotterdam.
It tells you that his final destination is back to New Jersey.
He paid his passage by “workaway”, which means he worked on board the ship in order
to pay his passage.
He is carrying 25 dollars.
It gives you the name of his wife Mrs. Burger and her address in New Jersey, and it also
gives you a personal description of Jacob Burger.
So, from the manifest, we learn that he is 5’ 5” with blue eyes, and we also learn
that, unfortunately, he is not a polygamist or an anarchist.
So, you can see that the later immigration lists will give you a wide source and a wide
variety of different information.
Katherine: I want to point out two things about this list.
One, Rebecca says unfortunately he is not a polygamist or an anarchist because no one
ever says yes.
They wouldn’t be allowed into the country if they admitted to that.
But, if you ever find one that says yes they are is a polygamist or an anarchist, please
let us know because we’ve been looking for these.
And the second thing I want to point out is that we were giving this lecture at one of
our Genealogy Fairs, and a gentleman in the front row recognized this family.
And Mrs. Burger’s name is apparently Edna according to this researcher.
I have no way to verify this, but he told us that.
Rebecca: Moving on, now we have the passenger manifest of the S.S New Amsterdam which arrived
into New York on June 11, 1953.
Because this is one of the later manifests, you’ll notice that it does not give as much
information about the individuals as the earlier manifests do.
On this manifest, you have John and Augusta Alexander.
John was born in New York.
Augusta was born in Germany.
And you find the amount of luggage that they are traveling with.
They have five suitcases, one trunk, one box, and two packages.
Now, one of the things that you want to take note of on this manifest is that under the
passport number they both have the same number.
So, it’s quite possible that they are a married couple even though it does not specify
this on the manifest.
Katherine: Now, I want to talk about availability of these records.
All of the examples we just showed you are available on microfilm at the National Archives
building and at some of our regional facilities.
Their holdings will vary.
So, it’s a good idea to check ahead before you visit.
Most of these records have been digitized and are available on Ancestry.com.
And we provide access at all of our facilities free of charge.
Some of the records, the New York records for 1892 to 1924, are available at EllisIsland.org,
and CastleGarden.org has a searchable database but no images of the New York arrival records
between 1820 and 1913.
And of course you can always submit a mail order request, and you can download a mail
order form at HYPERLINK "http://www.archives.gov" www.archives.gov . And, if you have any further
questions, please feel free to contact us.
Our general email is inquire@nara.gov .