Passenger Lists: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Ship
What U.S. arrival records contain in each era, how to find the right ship, and how to work backward to the hometown.
For most American families, the immigrant ancestor is a key turning point. Find the arrival record and you may learn the hometown, which opens up the records of the old country. But passenger lists changed a lot over time, and knowing what each era recorded tells you what to expect.
What the lists contain, by era
| Years | What you'll typically find |
|---|---|
| Before 1820 | No federal requirement. Surviving lists are scattered: colonial ship lists, oaths of allegiance (Philadelphia, 1727–1808), and published compilations. |
| 1820–1891 | Customs passenger lists: name, age, sex, occupation, country of origin. Rarely a town. |
| 1891–1906 | Immigration lists add marital status, last residence (often the town), who paid the passage, and the person being joined in the U.S. |
| 1906 onward | Adds physical description and place of birth. From 1907, the nearest relative left behind, with their address. |
Lists from the 1890s onward are often two pages wide. Make sure you look at both pages of the image, because the second page holds the best clues.
Gather clues before you search
Searching every "Johann Schmidt" who arrived in New York is hopeless. Narrow it first:
- Year of immigration: the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 censuses asked for it.
- Naturalization papers: after 1906 they usually give the ship, port and date. See Naturalization Records.
- Age and traveling companions: families often came together or in chain migrations, with one person sending for the rest.
- Port: New York took most arrivals, but Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans and Galveston were major ports, and many people entered through Canada.
Where to search
- FamilySearch has free indexes for most major ports.
- The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation has free New York records from 1820 to 1957, with images.
- Steve Morse's One-Step tools give much more flexible search forms for the same databases, including sounds-like spelling and searching by town.
- Ancestry has the broadest set of port indexes, including Canadian border crossings.
When the name won't show up
Names weren't changed at Ellis Island. That's a myth; lists were written at the port of departure. But they were often misspelled by clerks, and later misread by indexers. Try:
- The name in the original language (Giuseppe, not Joseph; Wojciech, not Albert)
- First name, age and year only, with no surname
- Searching for a traveling companion or the relative being joined instead
- Browsing the images for likely ships by date, page by page
Check the departure side
Some European ports kept their own lists. The Hamburg emigration lists (1850–1934) survive and often name the hometown. Most Bremen lists were destroyed, though fragments survive. British and Irish departures appear in UK outbound lists from 1890.
Once you have a hometown, the International Research section of our directory lists where to look next.
Next: Naturalization Records: How Immigrants Became Citizens →