CROSSING THE POND - Genealogy March 13, 2000

The greatest obstacle in researching our ancestors who came from across the ocean is the rarity of records of immigration and the almost total absence of passenger lists. I suppose if every ancestor hunter had three wishes, they would be for a discovery of such lists in some unknown hiding place, the retrieval of family papers thrown away as garbage, and the magical appearance of a name below every photograph in the family album. Oh well, dream again, because what is lost is lost. This was of course, prior to Internet! There is now a group of transcribers working on 'Passenger Lists' on a continual basis, and doing a fine job. Lots of Passenger Lists which we believed to be 'long gone' are now appearing on the Internet.

The keeping of regular passenger lists began in 1835 in Canada, although a few earlier records are available in the National Archives in Ottawa, and also in some of the Provincial Archives. However, in most cases it is necessary to know the name of the ship, the port of arrival and the date. These records are mostly from 1745 - 1752, 1810 - 1811 and 1817 - 1831. Even after 1855, the records are very scanty until 1865. From the latter year, lists are complete for the official ports of Halifax and Quebec. Other ports became "official" later on.

Should you be lucky enough to have an approximate date of arrival after 1855 in Canada, then you can obtain passenger lists through the inter-library loan system. The only problem being, you may have to go through a large number of reels which can be a very tedious job, but, sometimes you get lucky and find exactly what you are looking for. For instance, I know that a family member emigrated to Canada when their youngest child, born in England in 1910, was a 'toddler'. With this in mind, I decided to apply for lists between 1912 and 1914. I believe that there were ten reels in all, as I was unaware as to whether they landed in Halifax or Quebec. After days of looking through these lists, I found what I was looking for. The family had left Liverpool, England on May 17, 1913, on the "Tunisian".

The National Archives of Canada have all the films, which can be borrowed through the Inter Library Loan Service - to find the reel number:
Passenger lists by Port - 1865-1935 - Microfilm reels
http://www.archives.ca/02/020202/ships-e.html

Another source of finding Passenger Lists is through the Family History Centre, who have acquired 99% of National Archives passenger records. This would probably be the best route if looking for ships that sailed to the US, as these are not available in Canada through Inter Library Loan.

If your family emigrated to the US or Canada, there is a very good mailing list:

TheShipsList-L-request@rootsweb.com

- insert the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the note, and remember to turn off your signature. This list is very helpful and they can usually find something for you. You might find that more and more passenger lists are being transcribed by various people on a daily basis.

Find information on the ship that your relative was on

http://www.fortunecity.com/littleitaly/amalfi/13/ships.htm

An excellent ship page - one of the very best!

http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html

Emigration Ships and Resources

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/5978/Emigration.html

Emigration to America in 1847 - Irish Famine

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/swig/1847/1847.html

Some Ships that Sailed to North America listing Irish Passengers

http://members.tripod.com/~Data_Mate/irish/

Maritime Museum - Lots of information on Ships

http://community-1.webtv.net/NeptuneGrpLLC/FANTASTICMARITIME/

Cimorelli Immigration Manifests Online

http://www.cimorelli.com/safe/shipmenu.htm

here are some early ship sites:

http://www.primenet.com/~langford/gen_page.htm

http://istg.rootsweb.com

Quite a few Passenger Lists into New York

http://members.aol.com/ascaife/ships.html

searchable archives -- type in either ship's name or year

http://www.chignecto.net/TheShipsList

This site has some passengers from the Petworth Emigrant Scheme

http://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html

Ships arriving in Quebec 1820-06-22

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/swig/ships/ships1820.html

Latest changes and additions to Passenger Lists

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/swig/

Finding Passenger Lists at the Port of Boston, MA

http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/boston.html

Some paintings of ships - With this List of Ships below when you search the Ships Archives it will pick up the Ships Name:

http://www.pem.org/archives/mpd/mpdsidx.htm

NOTICE - the below URL's are a one stop site for wealth of info.

http://community-1.webtv.net/NeptuneGrpLLC/FANTASTICMARITIME/

http://community-1.webtv.net/lhbuehler/INDEXFANTASTICSITES/

List of Home Children - I know that quite a few people are researching "Home Children", relatives who, as small children were sent to Canada through homes in Britain like Dr. Barnardos. There is an excellent site "Young Immigrants to Canada, including Juveniles and Home Children", a site which cannot be missed if you are searching these areas.

http://www.archives.ca/exec/naweb.dll?brs?02011002|e|top|0

Although the HOME CHILDREN program did not begin until 1869, the date is close enough to our cut off date of 1867 to include this database URL on our list.

Between 1869 and the early 1930s, over 100,000 children were sent to Canada from Great Britain during the child emigration movement. If you are searching for an ancestor who was one of these HOME CHILDREN, you will want to try the National Archives of Canada ArchiviaNet with its online database for Home Children.

If you use the National Archives search for home children you can search on the keywords - such as the name of the ship (if you have it), it will bring up all the children that sailed on that particular ship.

Canadian Immigrant Records, Part One

http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/3795.htm

This database is a collection of over 146,800 records between 1780 and 1906 relating to immigrants to Canada. An excellent site and well worth a visit. I have just learned that this site was only FREE until March 9th, so it will have expired by the time of the Class. Watch our for Part Two!

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Kathy Witheridge

Genealogy SIG Leader