Passenger lists before 1925

Before 1820: no federal lists

Until January 1, 1820, the federal government did not require ship captains to hand in passenger lists. The National Archives says it generally has no lists for ships arriving before that date, with two exceptions: arrivals at New Orleans from 1813 to 1819 and at Philadelphia from 1800 to 1819.

For earlier arrivals, look for published lists gathered from colonial, state and private records. The National Archives points researchers to P. William Filby's Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, a multi-volume finding aid to published lists found in libraries with genealogy collections.

1820 to the early 1890s: customs lists

An act of March 2, 1819 required, from January 1, 1820, that the master of every ship arriving from a foreign port give a list of passengers to the collector of customs. For New York, the National Archives describes what these lists normally contain: the ship's name, its master, the port of embarkation and the date of arrival, and for each passenger the name, age, sex, occupation, the country they belonged to, the country they intended to live in, and the date and circumstances of any death on the voyage.

That is all. A customs list usually gives a country, not a town, and family groups are simply listed one after another. Look at who travels next to your ancestor, because neighbors on the list may have come from the same place. Ditto marks, written do. or as quotation marks, repeat the entry on the line above, so read up the column to see what they stand for.

1890s to 1924: immigration lists

In 1891 Congress put immigration under federal control, and the new Immigration Service took over collecting arrival manifests from the Customs Service. Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. USCIS divides the lists accordingly: customs lists for 1820 to 1892 and immigration lists for 1892 to 1924. Inspectors questioned each arrival and noted on the manifest whether the person was admitted or rejected.

The questions grew. According to the National Park Service, in 1893 the Ellis Island commissioner required steamship companies to ask additional questions on their manifests before passengers boarded. The National Archives lists the kinds of details you may find on later lists: nationality and place of birth, age, height, eye and hair color, occupation, last place of residence, the name and address of the relative being joined in the United States, and the amount of money carried.

From 1903, immigration law required race to be recorded on manifests. Officials used a List of Races or Peoples, which, as a National Archives article explains, was meant as a practical grouping by people or language, closer to what we would call ethnicity, not a scientific classification. Read that column as the officer's label, not as a description your ancestor chose.

Ports and routes

Lists are arranged by port of arrival, so you need to know, or guess, where the ship landed. New York was the busiest, but ships also arrived at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and other ports. Many immigrants landed in Canada and crossed by land; USCIS notes land border manifests for arrivals from Canada from 1895 to 1924 and from Mexico from about 1905 to 1924.

One gap matters at New York. The National Archives explains that the lists kept by the Immigration Service at New York under the 1882 immigration law were destroyed in the Ellis Island fire of June 15, 1897. The customs lists for New York survive through mid-June 1897, so for an arrival before the fire the customs list is the record to look for.

Finding the right list

Most searches start from a clue in another record: a naturalization paper, a census year of immigration, or a family story naming a ship. Then search an index by name and check the original image. Names were written down by clerks and indexed much later, so try spellings by sound, search by first name and age, and browse the list for a likely date when the index fails.

Read the whole entry, across every column and onto the facing page if the list continues there. The relative named as being joined in America, and the last residence abroad, are often the best clues on the page.