Immigration and Ships Passenger Lists Research Guide

After 1820, passenger traffic to the U.S. started to increase tremendously, and ships were now being built just for this passenger traffic. Regular scheduled sailing dates replaced the earlier practice where the captain would wait until his cargo hold was full before he sailed. Then.after the 1840's, trans-oceanic steam powered ships started to replace the sailing vessels which reduced the travel time from one-or-two months or more to about two weeks.

Due to the increased number of passengers and the increase in sickness and deaths in transit, the Federal Government passed legislation in 1819 to limit the number of passengers on each ship.  The Custom Service was designated to then monitor immigration.   Starting in 1820, Customs Passenger Lists were prepared by the ship's captain and were filed with the collector of customs at the port of arrival. These lists were initially meant to serve for statistical purposes. Except for a few ports, most of these passenger lists have survived and have been microfilmed by the National Archives.

Information that may be found on the Customs Passenger Lists	Click on image for a larger view
Country, Province, or Exact Town of Origin (About 10% of the lists may have an exact town listed) Date of Arrival in the U. S. Family Members or Others Who Immigrated on the Same Ship Destination in the U. S. Occupation, Age, and Sex Ship's Name, its Master, its Port of Embarkation, and its Port of Arrival

Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG) (Free)  http://immigrantships.net/   The ISTG is a group of volunteers who transcribe ships passenger lists which are then placed on the ISTG web site.  As of this time,  more than 7,500 transcriptions of passenger lists from the colonial days up to the 1900's have been uploaded to that site.  The passenger lists are searchable by: (1) Date, (2) Ship's Name, (3) Port of Arrival, and (4) Surname.

National Archives & Records Administration  (NARA) ADD (Free) Records for Passengers Who Arrived at the Port of New York during the Irish Famine - 1846 to 1851http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series_description.jsp?series_id=639&coll_id=1002 The Irish Famine Immigrants is fully searchable. This is one of  about 400 on-line databases available on NARA's Access to Archival Digital Databases (ADD) web site.

Microfilm copies of the passenger lists are available at the National Archives (NARA), the LDS FHC, and at some libraries.  The original customs passenger lists and the indexes generated by the WPA (in the 1930's) were microfilmed by NARA (in the 1940's) and are now archived as NARA Record Group 36.

Searching Microfilms in Indexed Years.- Contains a step-by-step example with illustrations

As illustrated in Table 4, many of the passenger lists have been indexed.  There are four steps in searching the indexed records:
1) Starting with the port of arrival, use a catalog for the index to find the microfilm roll that has the immigrants name
2) Search that microfilm to find the index card with the immigrant's name, and take note of the ship name, arrival date, and other information
3) Locate the microfilm containing that date of arrival using the catalog
4) Search that microfilm to find the date and that ship's manifest and then locate the immigrants listing 

Click here to link to a step-by-step example illustrating this procedure.   This example contains samples of catalog pages and scans of actual index cards that you may find in your research.  (Reminder - You may want to review Section 2.0 of this Guide for general research guidelines and for further information on using the National Archives, the LDS FHC, or a  library for research.)

Archives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
220 Morrissey Blvd.
Boston, MA 02125

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There are a number of private indexes that have been compiled by nationality and published in books (Some are now also online and on CD-Rom).  They are available at larger libraries and libraries having a larger genealogical collection.   If you find your ancestor's name in the indexes, the date and the ship name and other information is generally listed.  Then, go to the NARA (or LDS) passenger list catalog and find the microfilm roll number that refers to the Passenger List for the date found in the index.  Then get that microfilm and search for the applicable passenger list.

Some of the books of indexes are:
• Baca, Leo. Czech Immigration Passenger Lists. 9 volumes. Richardson, Tex. Czech immigrants between 1847 and 1899.  Some may be on CD-354
• Bentley, Elizabeth P.  Passenger Arrivals at the Port of NY 1820 -1829 & sequel book 1830-1832 , Baltimore, MD; Genealogical Publishing Co.  Alphabetical index of NY passenger arrivals.  This index has less errors and omissions than the WPA index on microfilm.
• Glazier, Ira A. and P. William Filby. Germans to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at US. Ports, 1850 to 1887. Multiple volumes Wilmington, Del, Scholary Resources, Inc. 1988.  Series II have recently been published and include 1840 to 1848 (Click here for discussion regarding use of these books.) Now online and on CD-Rom 354
• Zimmerman, Gary J. and Marion Wolfert ; German immigrants; lists of passengers bound from Bremen to New York 1847-1871. 4 volumes. Baltimore : Genealogical Publishing Co., 1985-1993. Abstracted from National Archives microfilm of passenger lists of vessels arriving at New York. Only those passengers for whom a specific place of origin is listed are included in this work.  Now online and on CD-Rom 267 and 354
  
• Glazier, Ira A. and Michael Tepper. The Famine Immigrants 1846-1851. 7 volumes. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983. List of Irish immigrants arriving at the Port of New York. Now online at NARA and Ancestry.com
  
• Glazier, Ira A. Italians to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at US Ports, 1880-1899. 2 volumes. (additional years are being added when completed). Wilmington, Del, Scholary Resources, Inc. 1992. Indexed lists of Italian passengers.  Now online and on CD-Rom 353
  
• Olsson, Nils William. Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York, 1820-1850. Chicago, Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, 1967. Lists, including biographical information of some of Swedish immigrants to New York.
• Swierenga, Robert P. Dutch Immigrants in US Ship Passenger Manifests, 1820-1880: An Alphabetical Listing by Household Heads and Independent Persons. 2 volumes. Wilmington, Del, Scholary Resources, Inc. 1992. List of Dutch immigrants. Now on CD-Rom 269
  
• Portuguese Passenger Ship Master List Project at the web site http://www.dholmes.com/ships.html describes a project to extract the data from ships lists for Portuguese emigrants to America.
• Glazier, Ira A. Migration from the Russian Empire: Lists of Passengers Arriving at the Port of New York, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1995+).  A published index for Russian Empire immigrants is now in progress, covering Russian (and Polish and Finnish) arrivals at U.S. ports: The first four volumes contain arrivals for Jan 1875 - May 1889,  This ongoing series will continue to 1910.  Now online and on CD-Rom 360
  
• Voultsos, Mary Greek Immigrant Passengers, 1885-1910, 4 vols. (Worcester, MA: 1991).
• Schenk, Trudy and Ruth Froelke, The Wuerttemberg Emigration Index [6 vols. to date] (Salt Lake City: 1986+).
• Mitchell, Brian,  Irish Passenger Lists 1847-1871 (Baltimore: 1988).  An index of passengers who departed from Londonderry AND who bought tickets from 2 shipping firms in Londonderry: McCorkell and J & J Cooke. 
  

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4.4 Castle Garden - Port of New York

Castle Garden located at the Battery in lower Manhattan was the immigration center for the Port of New York prior to Ellis Island opening in 1892.

By all accounts, the most exciting part of the journey was its end, the day of arrival, when ships made port and at long last the weary travelers could land. New York City was the principal port of entry for immigrants, their path to America determined by well-established shipping lanes across the Atlantic Ocean. The nation's largest seaport since the 1820's, New York was also a major railroad hub that offered access to nearly every part of the country.

Because of the waves of newcomers entering the city, New York was the first port to open an immigration depot - Castle Garden, a massive stone structure built in 1808 as a fort. It later served as an opera house until 1855, when New York State authorities transformed it into a landing station. Castle Garden's primary purpose was not to inspect, but to protect hapless newcomers from the crooks, prostitutes, and swindlers, that prowled the piers looking for easy marks. Within Castle Garden's walls, immigrants could exchange money, purchase food and rail tickets, attend to baggage, and obtain information about boarding houses and employment.

By the time it closed in 1890, the old depot, run-down and shabby from hard use, had registered over eight million immigrants.  It then was used as the New York Aquarium for a period of time.  Castle Clinton is now a National Monument.

Sources:

Castle Clinton National Monument    The National Park site describing the present National Monument and including pictures of this facility

Louis Alfano's web page - The Immigration Experience , provides pictures and a detailed history and other information about Castle Clinton, Ellis Island, and Angel Island (Processing Station at San Francisco)

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