B17: How can I find the passenger list of the ship that brought my ancestor to the U.S. and what information will I find on the passenger list?

How to find your immigrant ancestor on the passenger lists at a Mormon Church Family History Center

• 1. First, convert the surname you are researching into a Soundex code. You can obtain help converting it at your local FHC. The Family History Library and the National Archives, to name just two sources, publish pamphlets explaining soundex coding. If you have World Wide Web access, the following page offers a routine that allows you to type in the surname and obtain the soundex representation:

Click here to hyperlink to the soundex web page: http://www.rand.org/cgi-bin/Genea/soundex.sh - This page also contains instructions for manual coding.

• 2. Armed with the Soundex code, visit your local FHC. Find the Locality Catalog microfiche. (Note that the FHC has four different catalogs on microfiche: Author/Subject Catalog, Locality Catalog, IGI, and Surname Index.) The fiche are in alphabetical order by locality. Each state is considered a locality, as is each country. So, the UNITED STATES microfiche will come after TENNESSEE and TEXAS, and before the ones for VIRGINIA and WYOMING. Find a microfiche containing the heading "UNITED STATES - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION". Take the fiche to one of the microfiche readers.
• 3. Scroll through the fiche until you find the subheading, "Immigration and Naturalization Service." Following this subheading, you will find entries for a number of passenger and crew indexes, as well as other reference works. There are passenger and crew indexes for Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Galveston, Seattle, and others. Some of the indexes are alphabetical, and some are organized by soundex code.
• 4. Let's take New York as an example. Its passenger lists are the largest, by far. You will find a section titled "Index to passenger lists of vessels arriving at New York, June 16, 1897 - June 30, 1902. Index (Soundex) to passenger lists of vessels arriving at New York, July 1, 1902 - December 31, 1943." For 1902-1943 there is a soundex index of the passengers. For 1897-1902 there is an alpha index.
• 5. Proceed through the section until you locate the Soundex code you are searching for (assuming you are interested in the period from 1897 on). For example, suppose you are looking for the arrival record of Fortunato Schiro, who arrived in New York after 1900. The soundex code for SCHIRO is S600. Scroll down the soundex list and you will eventually come to:

S 562 Josef to S 600 Josef .......... 1380156

You would order film #1380156 through the FHC personnel.

• 5. After about two weeks the film you ordered will arrive at the FHC. Here's where the real work begins. This microfilm will contain images of 3" x 5" cards. The cards are usually filmed in two columns along the length of the film. One column will appear right-side up and the other upside down. Be sure you don't miss one of the columns! The cards contain the following information: name, soundex code, age, sex, line, page, and volume. (Sometimes, the ship's name, shipping line, and date of arrival were also written in, but this is a bonus.) The age, sex, line, page, and volume will be written on one line as a series of numbers, for example:

21m 22 3 1890

This entry refers to a 21-year old male listed on line 22, page 3, volume 1890. The volume number indicates where to find the actual passenger list. The actual volume number can be 1-4 digits long.

Remember that the soundex card index will list all of the surnames within the Soundex range during a wide time period. If your surname is somewhat common (or even, you think, not so common), you will see many very similar entries. Your job at this point is to identify one or more index cards that could be the relative you are searching for. Here's where all those tidbits of info come in handy; age, year arrived, and/or ship name. (Keep in mind that the cards are in alphabetical order by GIVEN name, regardless of surname, within the same soundex code. Thus, you will find all the "Alfredos" for all surnames covered by that soundex code before any "Andrea" or "Beatrice" for any surname. This can be confusing until you get used to it, since we are accustomed to searching lists alphabetized by surname.)

REMEMBER: This is NOT the passenger list. This is an index that will provide the information you need to pinpoint the microfilm containing the actual passenger list.

• 6. After identifying the index card or cards of interest, copy down the volume number, page number, and line number. Go back to the locality catalog fiche, to the same section where you found the soundex index, and find the entry for "Crew and Passenger Lists" for the appropriate time period. Scroll through the entries until you find the volume number or range of volume numbers corresponding to the one you want. That will correlate to another film number. For example, here is an actual entry from the catalog:

v. 256-257 Oct. 25 1900 ........ 1403906

This tells you that the passenger lists denoted as volumes 256 and 257, for October 25, 1900, are on film #1403906. (Note that this date may not correspond to the arrival date you find in any other source, such as census records and naturalization records. It may not even be the same as the arrival date on the passenger list that you locate in the end.)

Congratulations! This is the film that will contain the actual passenger list. Order the film and you should find your person on the page and line number you noted down earlier. When you find your person, look through the entire list of passengers on that vessel. You may find other people from the same town, other people who settled in the same neighborhood in the U.S., perhaps other relatives.

Caution: These instructions make the process sound easy and straightforward. This is not always (perhaps, not usually) the case. Be patient and diligent. Some searches are successful on the first try, and others can take a long time and still be inconclusive. (I still haven't found the passenger lists containing any of my grandparents' first arrivals!) Incorrect data such as age, name spelling, and port of arrival can lead to many a wild goose chase.

Additional Points:

• 1. The years from 1847-1896, for the port of New York are not indexed. You must have the date of the ship arrival to find the passenger list.
• 2. In addition to the entries under UNITED STATES - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION, you can find the passenger lists in the locality catalog under the particular state and city. For example, the New York lists can also be found on the fiche under NEW YORK, NEW YORK (CITY) - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION. (In the 2/95 microfiche, this starts on the fiche labeled NEW YORK, NEW YORK - VITAL RECORDS, just to confuse you!)
• 3. Although these instructions give details specific to the FHC microfiche, you can also perform this search on FHC computers, if available. The search procedure will be somewhat different, though more intuitive, on the computer.