This episode of Research Like a Pro focuses on the intricacies of tracing immigration records in genealogical research. Diana and Nicole discuss the common challenges faced when trying to locate an ancestor’s passenger list and the various entry points into the U.S., such as New York, New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, Canada, and Mexico. They emphasize the importance of combing through U.S. records for clues about an ancestor’s home country, ship’s name, date of immigration, and family relationships, highlighting the role of naturalization records, military records, passports, ethnic church records, and more. Through a detailed case study of Irish immigrant Patrick Savage, they illustrate how to navigate the complexities of common names and record gaps by piecing together information from both U.S. and home country records, underscoring the necessity of a comprehensive approach that includes looking at census records from 1900 to 1940 for immigration and naturalization details.
Transcript
Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 297 Immigration Records Part one Getting Started. welcome to Research Like, a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder Accredited genealogist Professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at family Locket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro A Genealogist Guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA, join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.
Nicole (42s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by newspapers.com, your go to resource for unlocking the stories of your ancestors. Hi everyone, welcome to Research Like a Pro
Diana (52s):
Hi Nicole How, are you doing today?
Nicole (54s):
Well, I’m a little under the weather, but hopefully my voice sounds okay. I am just plugging along, working on a lot of different classes and syllabi and things. What about you?
Diana (1m 5s):
Well, I am working on some client projects and study group lessons, my study group project and of course trying to catch up from Roots Tech, which we were just both at and enjoyed that so much. We are excited about all the different announcements that came out of Roots Tech. So what we’ll do for the next few podcast episodes is highlight those just one at a time so everyone can get a good feeling for what is new and great. So today I thought it would be fun to talk about the new family search, full tech searching for us land probate and Mexican noter records. And this is something that they have been hinting was going to be coming and it’s just exciting to have it live.
Diana (1m 51s):
So if you don’t know where to find that, it’s on your homepage of family search and you scroll down a little bit and on the right side you’ll see family Search labs. Then you will go to available experiments and you will say expand your search with full text. Go to the experiment. So I’m doing this live so that I can make sure I tell you exactly how to get it and then you will see a note that says, or this is the title, find results with full text search. And it does have a little note at the top that this is an Experimental Lab’s product and not guaranteed to always be available when using it. You may encounter some errors and limited data. Family search support is not currently available for this product.
Diana (2m 35s):
So I, think that’s good to know. We’re just excited that we’re getting to try this out. There’s a little video that you can watch on YouTube to explain how to really work on it and they’re telling us that we only have these two collections. One collection is US Land and probate and the other is Mexico Notary Records. So I would highly recommend you go try it out. You do some searching and see what you can find. So Nicole, I know as soon as you found out about this you, you dug in and did some fun searching. What did you find?
Nicole (3m 6s):
I did have fun with that because You know a lot of the work I’ve done is in burned counties where some records are missing. One thing that’s interesting about deeds is that there’s a lot of people mentioned in deeds that are not part of the deed index because only the grantor and the grantee are indexed. But people who are listed in the description of the land as neighbors or people who are witnesses are indexed. So there’s a lot of people to be found if you can search through a whole bunch of deeds. So I did look for the Dyer surname in my burn county of Hawkins County Tennessee and found an instance of Ignatius Dyer who’s a person of interest in my research question.
Nicole (3m 48s):
Who was the father of John Robert Dyer, who was born about 1810 in Tennessee and who lived in Hawkins from 1830 forward. And I haven’t found very many candidates for his father in Hawkins County. And one of the candidates I also found using the full text search was Robert Dyer. So there’s just all kinds of deeds where these men are mentioned, especially Robert h Dyer, who I think is Robert Henry Dyer. Anyway, so it’s just so many more clues now because when somebody’s a witness to a deed, then they’re an associate to the person writing the deeds. So then you have a whole new person to research that person who wrote the deed and and Ignatius was a witness to this person’s deed, so maybe this was a relative of his.
Nicole (4m 31s):
So there’s just a lot more to be done now. It’s exciting to have new leads.
Diana (4m 35s):
Oh, absolutely. And I love what you said about how not everyone is mentioned in the index and we have one of the deeds for our family history where there is a whole list of children that are mentioned because they were dividing the estate and none of them are in the index. So if you have a situation like that where your ancestor perhaps moved to a whole different location, you had no idea to search there, and then they have something like that where it’s listing family relationships and how exciting would that be? So we hope everybody listening will go try it out and then see what you can find. Well, our announcements for today, we launched new Airtable quick reference guides at Roots Tech.
Diana (5m 16s):
We were excited to have those available in laminated form. They are available as PDFs on our website. So we have the brand new version of Airtable Research, Logs for genealogy, so second edition with some updates and then a brand new reference guide tracking DNA matches. And so we hope you’ll go check that out on our website and see if maybe those would help you as you’re learning how to use Airtable if you’ve decided to tackle that. For our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for April, we have Alice Childs presenting parents of Maria Terwilliger in New York. It’s a DNA case study and this will be on Tuesday, April 16th at 11:00 AM Mountain.
Diana (5m 57s):
And Alice tells us that documentary evidence revealed Maria Terwilliger as the wife of Solomon Dunn and placed a woman likely to be her in his new pulse New York households in the early 18 hundreds, a baptism record for their son Robert Solomon provided Maria’s maiden name and census records provided Maria’s birth year range baptism records from local churches documented several Maria Terwilliger born within this range. Following the research psychopaths, DNA process helped outline a plan and identify the correct Maria. Rather than creating problems, pedigree collapsed proved helpful in solving this case.
Diana (6m 39s):
So the topics Alice will be covering are New York census records, Dutch reform church records, probate, gfe network graphs using Ancestry, DNA data, Lucidchart diagrams, pedigree collapse, and the Shared Cinema Morgan Project. So I’m really excited to learn about this especially I’m very curious about the pedicure collapse and how that was helpful in solving this case. Our next research Psycho Pro study group begins August, 2024 and we’ll go through the fall so you can start planning on that if you’re interested. And we will open registration this summer. And then please join our newsletter for our coupons and our latest blog posts, podcasts, and other fun things going on at Family Locket for upcoming conferences.
Diana (7m 25s):
Nicole, you will be presenting for the NY GN B conference, which actually is an organizing your family history workshop that’s taking place March 22nd to 23rd, and then I’m going out to Ohio for the Ohio Genealogical Society, which is April 10th through the 13th. And then we’ll both be presenting virtually at the National Genealogical Society Conference in May. So some fun conferences. We just finished Roots Tech and now we’re getting ready for the next thing, which is always fun.
Nicole (7m 57s):
Well, our listener spotlight today is from Susan about Paul’s Valley. She says, hi, I found your podcast on Spotify. I am loving it. I heard you talk about Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma and your locality episode at the very beginning. I was born and raised in Paul’s Valley where I spent most of my life. I am really interested in one of your study groups. I haven’t dug into your website yet, but I intend to do that this evening. Just wanted to say hi and Thank you, you have already helped my research habits so much. Well Thank you Susan, and it’s fun to hear that you’re from Paul’s Valley where a lot of our Schultz Ancestors are from. That was a big part of Diana’s research when she was doing her Accreditation,
Diana (8m 34s):
Right? It’s always fun to hear about people that live in the areas we’re researching. I love that.
Nicole (8m 40s):
Well, today we’re talking about Immigration records. Have you encountered the challenge of finding immigration records? This record type can be very difficult. In our United States research. We may Discover our ancestors home country and wonder how to find the passenger list that they came over on, whether they came from the British Isles, Europe, Scandinavia, or any other country. We always hope to find that exact date and place of entry, but difficulties can come with all the different possible places they could have entered the US to. They come through New York, New, Orleans, Boston, San, Francisco. Some people arrived in Canada and then crossed the border or some came north from Mexico.
Nicole (9m 22s):
So in this series about immigration records, we will be talking about strategies for finding this important information. One of the first things we need to do is look for clues from United States records whether they settled permanently in the US or traveled back and forth, they could be named in family sources, county histories, vital records, naturalization records, military records, passports, voting registers, ethnic church records, newspapers, census and land records. And all of these different types of records could have clues about the home country, the ship’s name, the date of immigration, and the family relationships. So in our research, we’re trying to find a whole body of evidence to uniquely identify our ancestors.
Nicole (10m 7s):
And Immigration records are one piece of that evidence and they have to be used in tandem with other records. The sheer volume of individuals who immigrated into the US with similar names, ages, occupations, and countries of origin can be confusing and it is common to merge identities. When, we’re looking for immigration records. So if the ancestor was alive for the 1900 to 1940 censuses, we can look for important immigration information on those censuses. This is a good starting point for our research. Each year ask similar questions such as the year of immigration, the number of years they’ve been in the us, the Naturalization status and so forth.
Nicole (10m 50s):
And one thing we can do is combine our Naturalization and immigration research to give us a better chance at finding Ancestors information. So let’s break down the censuses by year in 1900, this census can give us the year of their immigration to the US and the number of years in the US and whether still an alien or having applied for citizenship or naturalized. So you need to look for the column about naturalization and you’ll see the codes for al, which is alien pa, which is first papers filed and NA, which means they are naturalized. Then in 1910, this census asked for foreign born males, 21 years old and older and whether or not they were naturalized or alien.
Nicole (11m 36s):
So the codes are the same, A LP, A and na. Then in 1920 it also asks whether they’re naturalized or alien. And then it also asks the year of Naturalization, and that’s the only census that does that in 1930, it asks for the year of immigration and whether they’re naturalized. And in 1940 it asks for their birthplace and citizenship if foreign born. so it has a few different codes here for that NA naturalized PA having first papers, a L alien, a CIT, American citizen born abroad. Well sometimes as we’re looking at all this information from the census records, we’ll find conflicts and some census years won’t correlate with the others.
Nicole (12m 23s):
Exactly. And this is due to the informant just not being able to remember exact dates or possibly the informant not being the immigrant, but another household member who doesn’t know the immigrant’s dates and naturalization status. So they’re just guessing, but using what’s available, we can get a rough estimate of the timeline for an ancestor and the approximate date of immigration.
Diana (12m 44s):
Right. So one of the challenges we have is establishing a unique identity for our ancestor. And the ship passenger list can have so many people, as you mentioned, with a similar country of origin, age, date of entry, and of course name. So we have some strategies to conquer that problem. First, we thoroughly search our US records to get as complete as possible identification of the immigrant. So we are looking for a full name as well as possible alternative names, birth date or marriage date, ethnicity, religion, family and friend relationships.
Diana (13m 24s):
So those are some of the key points. So this idea about names, we might want to see how they are spelling the name or what name they’re using on all the different records. Perhaps they shortened a foreign name to sound more American later on in their life. And so as we seek out those records, we can take note and use all those name variations to search a passenger list. The immigrant’s age was generally noted on the passenger list, and that can be correlated with the age from the census records, tombstones, other records that we have discovered for the ancestor. And we also want to really look at information about marriage.
Diana (14m 5s):
Did they marry in the home country or did they marry after immigration? We sometimes think that an ancestor only made that voyage once, but we find that often they made multiple trips, especially if a man was coming over to earn money in the US and then returning home to help his family. So we always want to keep that in mind. And then ethnicity is important to understand and we can combine that with the study of the country’s geopolitical changes. So an ancestor may have identified as Prussian in one census and German in the next because of changes in European borders. And then knowing the ancestors’ religion will point to appropriate church records to search both in the United States and in the country of origin.
Diana (14m 52s):
If the priest or minister spoke the same language such as German, the immigrant’s name could be recorded more correctly and then the appropriate church records could be searched in the home country. And then finally, immigrants often traveled with extended family, friends or people from the same community. And when other identifying factors don’t help, these relationships might be the key to finding our ancestors among all those with similar identities. So in short, we want to follow every clue we can from the known records to find connections between our ancestors associates in both the US and the home country.
Nicole (15m 34s):
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Nicole (16m 14s):
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Diana (16m 31s):
Well, let’s do a case study. I love case studies in illustrating how to do this type of research. So we’re going to use the case of Irish immigrant Patrick Savage, who was born about 1825 and died about 1880. So in the case of Patrick, his descendants had not located his immigration record and only knew about his family in the United States. And they had settled in Michigan by 1870. His wife’s name in the records was either he Nora, Mary, Anna, or Angela, depending on the record. Patrick and his wife were both born in Ireland and their oldest child was born about 1860 in either Ireland or New York.
Diana (17m 12s):
So researching Patrick found him residing in Allen Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan in 1850. This census was taken on 25 September, 1850 and Patrick age 25 was listed among a group of Irish laborers residing in the boarding house of Steven C. Gardner. Of note is the entry of James Dailey just three lines below that of Patrick. So when did Patrick arrive in the United? States with this common name indexes for ship passenger list have entries for multiple men named Patrick Savage, but one entry also includes the name James Dailey.
Diana (17m 53s):
And so we can hypothesize that the two men traveled from Ireland together or perhaps became friends on board the ship and then continued on to Michigan. The ship manifests for the guy Mannering, Liz Patrick, Savage age 24, a laborer from Ireland, destination USA. Then James Dailey is listed as 24, a laborer from Ireland destination USA, and the two men are listed right next to each other. The ship manifests generally do list family groups, and although these two men are not in a family group, have different surnames, the listing one line apart does point to a possible connection when paired with the 1850 census.
Diana (18m 35s):
So this ship departed from Liverpool, England and arrived in New York City on 12 October, 1849. And most of the ship’s passengers listed their destination as the USA with a few going on to Canada. Many of them were from Ireland and England. And the Irish potato famine had begun in 1845 and before it ended in 1852, over 1 million Irish had perished from starvation and another 1 million had left their homes as refugees. So this gives us the likely impetus that caused Patrick to immigrate to the United. States Patrick and James arrived in October of 1849 and were living out in Michigan by September of 1850.
Diana (19m 20s):
When that census was taken and looking at that area, we found that they likely worked their way west traveling by railroad until they arrived in Allen Township, Hillsdale County of Michigan. The main occupation of the individuals listed on that 1850 census in Allen Township was farming with the usual spattering of carpenters, blacksmiths and grocers. Patrick Savage and other immigrants from Ireland boarding at the boarding house were likely working on the railroad, but their occupations were all noted as laborer.
Nicole (19m 55s):
Well, how long Patrick stated, the United States is unknown, but by 1859 he had traveled back to Ireland to marry ha Nora. The marriage record in Ireland states Patrick’s residence as Michigan tying him to the Patrick Savage of the 1850 census. No other Patrick Savage is listed in the 1850 Census Index residing in Michigan. So this must be the same man. The register of Abby Doey County Care Ireland provides evidence of the marriage of Patrick Savage of Michigan, and he Nora Shanahan of BH on March 1st, 1859. The information was recorded in Latin with the heading in Sippet Menis 1859, meaning the beginning of entry is for the month of March, 1859.
Nicole (20m 44s):
Patrick and he Nora’s entry is listed first with the number one barely visible in the image. The pages folded over on the right side, obscuring any witness names and part of the word Michigan. Although several Patrick Savages born about 1825 are listed in Irish Parish registers a baptism record for Patrick Savage born May 9th, 1825 in K Carey County, Ireland could very well be for the Michigan immigrant born to parents Richard Savage and Joanna Casey of Ali. The sponsors were Elena Daley and Timothy Murphy. Sponsors were often family members. And the surname Daley corresponds to that of James Dailey, the Irish associate of Patrick Savage.
Nicole (21m 29s):
This is the only Patrick discovered so far with the baptism and county Kerry, where Patrick Savage and ha Nora Shanahan married in 1859. If Patrick had been raised in county carry upon return to Ireland, it would be logical that he would return to his parents’ home.
Diana (21m 46s):
So in the case of Patrick Savage, the key to discovering his initial immigration to the US was noticing that fellow border and traveler James Dailey Patrick followed a pattern of coming to the US to work and then returning to Ireland to marry Hara Savage. So when did they immigrate to the us? Well, no ship passenger list has yet been discovered for the couple, but following their marriage in on March 1st, 1859, they likely lived in Ireland for at least two years because their two oldest children, Thomas and Catherine Savage were reported as born in Ireland in 1860 and 1861 in the 1870 census searching those Catholic parish registers in Ireland did not locate a baptism for either child with the correct parents.
Diana (22m 37s):
And the couple hasn’t been located on the 1860 census in the us so it’s likely they were in Ireland during those years. But as we know, we have record loss and perhaps they were traveling. We never know and we can’t find a record why we can’t find it. But hopefully those of you listening can really see how this case study points out the challenges of immigration research with common names and finding the right ship passenger list because with so many US ports, the Savage family when they were coming back Patrick with his family, they could have come through Canada or perhaps came through a different port than New York and maybe the records of that voyage don’t exist anymore.
Diana (23m 23s):
The National Archives houses these ship lists and they explain that there are gaps in the record. And so we know with any record type we will have some record loss. But putting all the pieces together, this was definitely a case of looking at records in Ireland and the United States and gathering in the fan club with the James Daley. But we were able to put together a very likely immigration story of Patrick Savage, a man who had a pretty similar name with a lot of other Patrick’s. So hopefully this will give everyone listening some ideas if you’ve been stuck on your Immigration research for an ancestor.
Diana (24m 6s):
In the next episode, we will continue discussing immigration.
Nicole (24m 10s):
All right, have a great week. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye
Diana (24m 13s):
Bye-Bye
Nicole (24m 15s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DA on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at family Locket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.
Links
Back to the Basics with Immigration Records: Part 1 – Getting Started – https://familylocket.com/back-to-the-basics-with-immigration-records-part-1-getting-started/
Sponsor – Newspapers.com
For listeners of this podcast, Newspapers.com is offering new subscribers 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription so you can start exploring today. Just use the code “FamilyLocket” at checkout.
Research Like a Pro Resources
Airtable Universe – Nicole’s Airtable Templates – https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrsBSDhwHyLNnP4O/nicole-dyer
Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference – by Nicole Dyer – https://familylocket.com/product/airtable-research-logs-for-genealogy-quick-reference/
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
14-Day Research Like a Pro Challenge Workbook – digital – https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-digital-only/ and spiral bound – https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-spiral-bound/
Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2024 – monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2024/
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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