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Passenger Lists

International & Passenger Records Collection

If you need to make that genealogical leap across the ocean, start with this dynamic resource for reaching immigrant ancestors. Passenger and immigration lists, in particular, can provide breakthrough clues to link American ancestors with a homeland overseas.

Passenger and immigration lists can be an invaluable primary source for tracing the vast majority of immigrants to the United States, particularly in the 19th century. With the single exception of federal census records they are the largest, the most continuous, and the most uniform body of records for the entire country.

International and Passenger Records This authoritative collection includes passenger lists for all of America's major Atlantic ports, plus European, British, and Canadian records. Buy

Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (PILI)

The Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (PILI) contains immigration, passenger and naturalization records of individuals that came to the U.S. and Canada between the 16th and mid-20th centuries, containing more than 2.8 million citations. Information includes the name and age of the immigrant; year and place of arrival, naturalization, or other records which indicates person indexed is an immigrant; and names of all listed family members, with their age and relationship to the main entry.

Free Lists at Olive Tree Genealogy

The Olive Tree Genealogy, created by Lorine McGinnis Schulze in February 1996, is committed to bringing you tons of passenger lists. All of the passenger lists on Olive Tree Genealogy are FREE for you to use to find that elusive ancestor. Start browsing those lists plus thousands of off-site lists at her Directory of Ships Passenger Lists on the Internet. You can find passengers on ships list by country of arrival, by state of arrival, or by ethnic group.

Additional Information

Passenger Arrival Lists
by Loretto Dennis Szucs

What fires the imagination more than the image of our own immigrant ancestors first setting foot on American soil? Your family's arrival in the United States is an important part of your personal history. There may be a passenger arrival list that shows your ancestor's name—and hopefully a lot more about him or her.

Rediscovering Passenger Lists
by Kory L. Meyerink, AG, MLS

Since 1820, over 60 million persons have arrived at more than 100 different ports in the United States, bringing with them unique cultures, histories, and family stories. Their new lives were generally better than the lives they left behind, but in climbing the social ladders of the United States, personal histories began to be obscured. Information about ancestral homeland, occupation, social status, even the family name were often jettisoned to make way for the "new American."

Taking the Plunge on Ships' Passenger Lists
by George G. Morgan

What I have learned over the years, though, is that there really is a huge collection of passenger lists available. Most of the records have not been digitized and placed online on the Internet or in databases, but there certainly are indices that can help you locate where to search for the originals, or for microfilm and scanned images.

 

 

See also: GenDirectory: Passenger Lists