The Crossing: Immigration and Passenger Records

Chapter 3 of 4

The crossing produced the one record almost every American family has already seen: the passenger manifest. It is also the record most often misread. This chapter is about getting everything out of it, and about the arrival records families do not know to look for.

1887 engraving of immigrants on a steamer deck passing the Statue of Liberty
Steerage passengers crowd the deck as their steamer passes the Statue of Liberty, in a wood engraving from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1887.

These articles cover the ports, the manifest columns and how they changed year by year, and the detention and inspection records most searches never open.

Records in this chapter

Ellis Island

Ellis Island and Castle Garden Records

New York arrivals, 1855 to 1924

Other ports

Baltimore, Philadelphia and Canadian Border Crossings

Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and Canada

Reading a manifest

How to Read a Passenger Manifest

What each column and annotation means

Detention & return

Detained Aliens, Special Inquiry and Return Migration

Birds of passage and second crossings

Immigrants with bundles on their way to Ellis Island around 1900
Immigrants on their way to Ellis Island, photographed about 1900 by the Bain News Service. Each of them was already listed on a manifest written at the port of departure.

Research guide

Why the village name on your ancestor’s papers is probably wrong

1902 image of a doctor examining an arriving immigrant's eyes
A doctor stops an arriving immigrant suspected of poor eyesight, 1902. Passengers held back like this appear on separate lists of detained aliens and special inquiry cases.

What we do with these records

Immigration & Passenger Records locates every crossing a person made, at every port, and reads each manifest in full. Ancestral Village Identification uses the same records to establish the parish.

See projects & prices

Next chapter: Life in America