Immigrant Passenger Lists to the U.S.

Finding a family or relative on a ship’s passenger list to the U. S. can be similar to looking for a needle in a haystack. If your ancestors came to America after the late 1600’s they landed in the port of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, or Charleston and passenger ship lists were not required for entry. Estimates for the number of emigrants arriving up to 1776 are well over 250,000. Lists of passengers and cargo were kept by the owners of the ship, whether an individual or company, and most of the records were not saved.

Due to the diligent work of many volunteers, old records have been found and transcribed. You may find who your looking for, what year the person arrived, where they left, the name of the ship and the arrival port. The list will have the name and perhaps the age. With so little information it may be difficult to find out which one of the many "John Jones" shown belong to your family.

1. _{Cyndi's List - Ships & Passenger Lists}
2. _{Ellis Island - FREE Port of New York Passenger Records Search}
3. _{Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild}
4. _{TheShipsList: Passengers, Ships, Shipwrecks}
5. _{On the Trail of Our Ancestors/Index to Ships' Lists}

Be aware that searching can be a very time consuming task and you may find a site where quite a few of the links are broken and have been for quite a while. These sites are run by volunteers, quite a bit of work is involved and there are times when there aren’t enough volunteers to help maintain the site. Most do appreciate an email letting them know about the broken link and will try to fix it asap.

I have used all the sites above but didn't find anyone in my family on any of the ships passenger lists so I gave up and went on to other areas. Records of arriving ships and their passengers were not kept until 1820 and since then have been collected by US Customs at all ports of entry. I hadn't recently done a search at The National Archives so this morning decided to see what I could find at http://aad.archives.gov/ and the results were interesting.

I couldn’t find my Nolte’s but did find a Carl Nolte so let’s pretend he’s a great uncle I’m researching: Nolte, Carl age 27, Male, Laborer, Literacy unknown, Country of Origin Germany, Last residence: unknown, destination: United States; Manifest Identification Number: 12509; Ship Name: Aleppo; Port of Departure: Liverpool; Date of Arrival: 7/13/1868

I then searched for Carl on ancestry.com : Carl Nolte 1841 Germany died US and found:

• 1880 United States Federal Census Richardson Co., Nebraska
• 1. Carl Nolte born abt 1840 in Prussia, spouse: Maria Nolte
• 1900 United States Federal Census Martin Co., Minnesota
• 2. Carl Nolte Home in 1900: Rolling Green, Martin, Minnesota Age: 59
• Birth Date: Oct 1840 Birthplace: Germany Race: White Gender: Male
• Immigration Year:1868
• Relationship to head-of-house: Head
• Father's Birthplace: Germany, Mother's Birthplace: Germany
• Spouse's Name: Louisa Nolte
• Marriage year:1871 Marital Status: Married Years married: 29
• Occupation: Farmer
• Louisa Nolte 52; Children: Carl F. Nolte 26, Gustaf Nolte 22, Matilda Nolte 20, Amelia Nolte 18, Lewis Nolte 16, Louisa Nolte 14, Amanda Nolte 12, Fritz Nolte 9

Although this doesn’t provide the history of Carl 2, you now know he sailed from Liverpool, England and the date he arrived in the US. The United States census information is a starting point providing family names that can be researched further using later census reports, tax list, cemeteries, obits, death and birth records and perhaps family trees in the United States.

Happy Hunting!