Researching ancestor immigrant records

It does not pay to be too sanctimonious about your ancestors when you are researching them. They were after all, humans, just like all of us. As a point, I got a kick out of some early history of Iowa and the Catholic-Irish settlement that my great-great grandparents were a part of when I read that because clergymen were usually circuit priests (traveling between sparsely populated “towns”) scheduled to be only in an area for a short time and then returning a few months later, there were times when the birth of a child proceeded it’s parents’ marriage. What to do? Well, since births weren’t always recorded immediately you could always change the birth date when you recorded it years later! African-American families have a hard-enough time researching their ancestors without the added fact that in the 1800’s some areas denied them a legal marriage hence the ceremony of “jumping over the broom” which was a sealing of a marriage vow without openly violating a ridiculous law.

That same theory applies when if your ancestors entered the United States “legally”. For one thing, there was no such thing as border patrols, passports, etc. Having trouble finding the ship your people arrived on? Thinking their names are on a ship manifest would only be true if your ancestors left their native countries after 1820 when the Steerage Act came into play which required ship captains to keep official passenger lists of boats sailing into American ports. Even then there was a huge amount of graft going on with “steerage” immigrants (the poorest of the passengers) being preyed on by criminals and con artists when they disembarked in Manhattan. It was 1855 before there was an actual immigration center when Castle Garden was taken over by the New York State Board of Commissioners of Emigration. It was then, however, that those poor souls finally were given paths to find work, exchange currency, gather letters or funds left for them by family and even find a boarding house to stay in if no family was providing housing. Each person’s name, country of origin, and intended destination was carefully recorded. Encouraging? Unfortunately, all those records which cover from 1855 to 1890 are lost.

From 1820 to 1840, it is estimated that 70% of immigrants were from three countries: Germany, Ireland and England. According to sources, lists of Irish passengers prior to 1820 have been drawn from Irish newspapers like the Shamrock or the Hibernian Chronicle. Philadelphia’s port, the fourth largest influx port of its time, drew many of these immigrants including some of my Scott-Irish ancestors.

What ports were more lenient? New Orleans for one, whose business community wanted a free and open port which made it a beacon of hope for those who might have been turned away at stricter ports. This means that in the years before the Civil War, New Orleans became the second leading port of entry in the United States. The other drawing factor was the steam-ship travel up the Mississippi River which allowed immigrants access to the farmlands further north.

Don’t forget Canada, Mexico and South America. Travel from England to Canada was cheaper than traveling to the United States and many of the Ireland/Scotland/Wales immigrants went to England first, bought passage to Canada and then crossed the border into the United States, often unchecked. South America was a second choice of the Germans from Russia immigrants since it offered lucrative land for anyone re-locating there. Even in Red Willow County we have history of the same group who traveled to South America first and then finding the United States more palatable, came here. Unfortunately for those of us on the hunt, border crossings from Canada and Mexico are only available in documents from 1895 forward but I have found several references of families who traveled to Canada, lived there for a period, and then traveled back to the U.S. by searching Canadian census records.

Several of these port records, if still in existence, are available on www.familysearch.org, a free site I have referred to often. When you access that site, please go ahead and register, it doesn’t cost you anything, but it does open more records for you to search. I do not have a family tree on that site, but I go to it often for information. Happy hunting!