Back to the Basics with Immigration Records: Part 3 1820-1906

If your ancestor emigrated to the United States after 1820, there is a good chance there may be a record detailing the ship, date of arrival, port of departure, fellow passengers, and more. The challenge comes in uniquely identifying our ancestors among those of the same name. Record availability in the 19th and 20th centuries is fairly good, so we can research the ancestors thoroughly, looking for important clues.

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the important factors for identity, such as full name, birth or marriage date, ethnicity, religion, and family/friend relationships. In part 2, we discussed the Colonial Era of the United States, what records might be available, and how to find them. This blog post will cover the period from 1820 up to 1906 when the immigration process and records changed dramatically.

The 19th century saw immigration to America increase greatly, with people coming from the British Isles, Scandinavia, Germany, and Holland. This included a huge wave of immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Our six-part series on Irish research covers specifics for tracing Irish immigrants, and our six-part series on 19th-century German immigrants gives specific tips for this important topic. With the industrial revolution beginning about 1880 and the urbanization of large cities, a huge number of southern and eastern Europeans immigrated from Russia, Poland, Romania, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The peak year was 1907, with over a million arrivals.

Hosted by the Library of Congress, “Emigrants [i.e. immigrants] landing at Ellis Island” is a movie clip showing emigrants landing at Ellis Island in 1903 – a fascinating and sobering look at what this meant in the life of our ancestors.

United States Immigration Laws

Whichever country your ancestor left behind, immigration and the records were influenced by United States laws. Those laws encouraged or discouraged immigration and must be researched to understand how they affected your ancestors. The Library of Congress has published the laws, private and public, ever enacted by Congress. Some of the major laws with far-reaching implications are below.

1819 Steerage Act: An Act Regulating Passenger Ships and Vessels

Following the War of 1812, emigration from Europe to the United States increased greatly due to better transportation options. However, the conditions for passengers were terrible, with the poorest who traveled in steerage being given limited food, water, ventilation, and access to the ship’s deck.

In 1819, the United States Congress passed the first of several Steerage Acts to offer protection to immigrants. This act was passed by the Fifteenth Congress on 2 March 1819 and required the ship’s captain to deliver “a list or manifest of all the passengers taken on board of the said ship or vessel at any foreign port or place; in which list or manifest it shall be the duty of the said master to designate, particularly, the age, sex, and occupation, of the said passengers, respectively, the county to which they severally belong, and that of which it is their intention to become inhabitants. . .”¹

The law required passenger lists to be filed with a customs agent, but not all ports had customs agents. The lists were then to be forwarded to the U.S. Secretary of State.

Immigration Act of 1882

On 3 August 1882, the 47th Congress passed an update to the U.S. immigration policy. This act brought the immigration policy under the umbrella of the federal government rather than the state or local ports. This act called for a head tax on non-citizens arriving in the United States and imposed restrictions on immigration for those considered undesirables or Likely to become a Public Charge (LPC). This could be assigned to any number of situations, including poverty, lunacy, disability, illness, pregnancy, or being a single woman. The head tax of $.50 per non-citizen passenger was paid into the immigration fund of the U.S. Treasury and helped finance the bureaucracy managing immigration.²

1891 Immigration Act

Building upon the 1882 Immigration Act, the Act of 1891 changed the way incoming vessels were dealt with. The ship officers had to submit a list of passengers to the immigration inspectors at the port, who would then board the ship and perform medical examinations on any passenger who might be unfit and a disease carrier. This act not only included the ports on the U.S. coasts but expanded to cover border crossing with Mexico and Canada.³

Castle Garden and Ellis Island

In 1855, Castle Garden opened as the United State’s first immigration station. Known as the Emigrant Landing Depot and connected to Manhattan Island on an artificial island, Castle Garden was a military fort from 1811 to 1821. From its beginnings in 1855 to 1890 when it was replaced by Ellis Island as an immigrant processing station, it is estimated that 8 million immigrants were processed. Records for Castle Garden are included in the large collection, “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891” on FamilySearch.

Following the 1891 Immigration Act, Ellis Island was opened as an immigrant inspection location. Located near New York City, it became the busiest inspection and processing station in the United States. Millions of immigrants passed through Ellis Island from its opening in 1892 to 1954. The Ellis Island Passenger Search database holds 65 million records for passengers arriving in the port of New York between 1820 and 1957.

The image below depicts immigrants waiting their turn for inspection at Ellis Island.⁴

What Kinds of Records?

Although we may think mainly of ship passenger manifests as the record to search. In reality, many types of records were created. When a person arrived in the United States, they could be listed in any of the following: passenger/arrival lists (ship manifests), hospital records, detainee lists, alien registration (LPC – lack of proper credentials), naturalization records, newspapers, and periodicals.

Records were also created when a person left their home country. These could include the sale of property, permits to emigrate (Germany), indentures, work permits, travel documents, emigrant lists, church records, and more.

We also have additional record types, such as border crossings between the U.S. and Canada or the U.S. and Mexico, passport applications, and crew lists.

Finding the Records

The National Archives holds the passenger arrival records from 1820 to 1982. It is important to note that there are gaps, and the records are by no means complete. The records have been microfilmed and are currently being digitized.

The FamilySearch Research Wiki page for US Immigration Passenger Arrival Records breaks down the various collections by United States city and year and includes direct links to collections on FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage. A sound methodology is to perform a broad search first, then, if the ancestor is not located, begin searching specific databases.

Ancestry has a major collection simply titled “Passenger Lists.” This can be filtered by location and date, and basic information for the ancestor can be filled in. Within this large collection are smaller data collections specific to a port such as New York or Alabama. For example, if you know that your ancestor was a sailor out of Boston, Massachusetts. You’d want to search the Massachusetts, Boston, Crew Lists, 1811-1921. You could use the search engine or browse the crew lists by date. Although indexed, your ancestor’s name could be difficult to read and indexed differently than you would expect.

We always research our ancestors thoroughly in U.S. records such as the census and review family knowledge before moving to immigration records. This will help us identify our ancestors among those of the same name.

Case Study

My 2nd great-grandparents, William and Mariah Brockhouse, emigrated to the United States from their native England in 1868. In writing my blog post about Mariah, I realized that I didn’t have any record documenting their voyage and began my search with records created after their arrival in the U.S.

The first U.S. census to list William and Mariah was in 1870. They resided in Utah Territory and reported they were both born in England with parents of foreign birth. No questions about immigration or naturalization were asked in this census enumeration, but viewing their household, we can see that the first child born in the U.S. was Emma, age 3/12, who was born in February of 1870. They likely arrived between Matilda’s birth in 1867 in England and Emma’s U.S. birth in 1870.⁵

• William Beddoes, 31, laborer, England parents of foreign birth, cannot read or write
• Maria Beddoes, 28, keeping house, England, parents of foreign birth
• Serena Beddoes 5, at home, England
• Matilda Beddoes, 3, England
• Emma Beddoes, 3/12, Utah, born February

 

The Beddoes family was next enumerated on the 1880 census, which had no questions about immigration or naturalization but did ask about parent birthplaces, which can help to trace immigration. William and Mariah, born in England, reported their parents were also of English descent. Again, their daughters’ birthplaces give excellent clues to an immigration date of between 1867 (Matilda was born in England) and 1870 (Emma was born in the U.S.). ⁶

With the influx of immigrants into the U.S., the 1900 census asked specifically for the immigration year, number of years in the U.S., and whether a person was a citizen. William and Mariah reported their immigration year of 1868, which correlates with their daughters’ birthplaces. They were both naturalized and had been in the U.S. for 32 years. Mariah and the children would have become citizens under William’s naturalization.⁷

The 1910 census for William Beddoes repeated the citizenship questions, but the microfilming makes it difficult to tell whether it is 1865 or 1868. He did report being naturalized.⁸

By 1920, the census asked for the date of immigration AND the date of naturalization. William reported an immigration in 1868 and his naturalization in 1872 – all information correlated with other census records and family details. ⁹

Family stories and histories can give clues about the immigrating ancestor but must be evaluated for accuracy and weighed against other evidence. William’s daughter, Eliza, wrote a history of his life and gave this description of the journey.¹⁰

They left England in the spring with the two little girls. The steamship “Manhattan” sailed from Liverpool, England, with 480 saints under the direction of Archibald N. Hill. They were on the water six weeks, and arrived in New York July 4, 1868 . . .

With the clues from the census and the family history, it appears that William and Mariah sailed in 1868 on the Manhattan. However, searching the Ancestry collection,  “New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” I found a record for William, a steerage passenger on the Colorado, arriving in New York on 28 July 1868.¹¹ Was this the correct William Beddoes? Armed with the knowledge of his wife’s name, Mariah, and his daughters, Selina and Matilda, it was clear that this was indeed the Beddoes family.

Viewing the first page of the ship manifest, I learned that Robert Chas. Cutting, Master of the S.S. Colorado declared the following list or manifest to be a full and perfect list of all the passengers taken on board the steamship at Liverpool & Q’town. The printed form continues:

 . . .on said list is truly designated the age, the sex, and the occupation of each of said passengers, the part of the vessel occupied by each during the passage, the country to which each belongs, and also the country of which it is intended by each to become an inhabitant; and that said List of manifest truly sets forth the number of said passengers who have died on said voyage and the names and ages of those who died.

The great majority of the passengers traveled in steerage, and the total passenger count was 1,159. It must have been crowded! The printed list reflects the law requiring the ship’s captain to report on all the passengers.

Key to finding the correct passenger list for William Beddoes was knowing the names of his family members, an approximate date and place of arrival, and his country of origin. Although his history gives the wrong ship, the date was close. Perhaps another family member arrived on the Manhattan, and William’s daughter, Eliza, confused the two names. When evaluating family histories, we must always consider the possibility of errors creeping in.

What about William Beddoes’ naturalization records? With the information gleaned from the census study, I found his declaration of intention to become a U.S. citizen. Read more about how to find these records that are closely related to immigration in Back to the Basics with Naturalization Records: Part 1

Part 4 of this series will discuss immigration after 1906.

Best of luck in all your genealogical endeavors!

The Complete Series

Back to the Basics with Immigration Records: Part 1 – Getting Started

Back to the Basics with Immigration Records: Part 2 – Colonial Era

Back to the Basics with Immigration Records: Part 3 1820-1906

Back to the Basic with Immigration Records: 1906 Forward

 

 

1. Acts of the Fifteenth Congress of the United States, Sess. II. ch. 47. 1819, p. 489, Library of Congress (https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llsl//llsl-c15/llsl-c15.pdf : accessed 13 October 2023).
2. “Immigration Act of 1882,” Immigration History (https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1882-immigration-act/ : accessed 15 October 2023).
3. “Immigration Act of 1891,” Immigration History (https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1891-immigration-act/ : accessed 15 October 2023).
4. Awaiting examination, Ellis Island, New Jersey, New York Ellis Island, 1920, Photograph, Libarry of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/97501087/ accessed 15 October 2023.
5. 1870 U.S. Census, Utah County, Utah Territory, population schedule, Pondtown, p. 259B, (stamped), p. 4 (penned), dwelling 28, family 27, William Beddoes; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 April 2023); citing NARA microfilm publication M593, roll 1612.
6. 1880 U.S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Salem Precinct, enumeration district (ED) 86, sheet 239B (stamped), p.2 (penned), dwelling 12, family 12, William Beddoes; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 October 2023); citing NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 1338.
7. 1910 U.S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Salem, enumeration district (ED) 197, sheet 1A (stamped), dwelling 1, family 1, William Beddoes; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 October 2023); citing NARA microfilm publication T624.
8. 1910 U.S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Salem, enumeration district (ED) 197, sheet 1A (stamped), dwelling 1, family 1, William Beddoes; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 October 2023); citing NARA microfilm publication T624.
9. 1920 U.S. Census, Utah County, Utah, population schedule, Salem, enumeration district (ED) 214, sheet 7A (stamped), dwelling 128, family 136, William Beddoes; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 October 2023); citing NARA microfilm publication T625, Roll 1868.
10. Eliza Beddoes Curtis, “William Beddoes,” Memories, William Beddoes (1838-1920) KWCB-KQ4, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/6478773 : accessed 15 October 2023), contributed by Nicole Elder dyer, 11 April 2014.
11. “New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” Wm, Mariah, and Selina Beddows 28 July 1868, ship Colorado, database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7488/images/NYM237_299-0025 : accessed 14 April 2023).