FamilySearch and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. announced yesterday that the entire collection of Ellis Island New York Passenger Arrival Lists from 1820 to 1957 are now available online on both websites, giving the opportunity to the descendants of more than 100 million arrivals to discover their ancestors quicker and free of charge.
Originally preserved on microfilm, 9.3 million images of historical New York passenger records spanning 130 years were digitized and indexed in a massive effort by 165,590 online FamilySearch volunteers. The result is a free searchable online database containing 63.7 million names, including immigrants, crew, and other passengers traveling to and from the United States through the nation’s largest port of entry.
“The Foundation is delighted to make these immigration records accessible to the public for free for the first time,” said Stephen A. Briganti, president and CEO of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. “This completes the circle of our decades-long collaboration with the team from FamilySearch, which began with providing the public with unprecedented access to their genealogy and sparking a world-wide phenomenon linking past and present.”
The expanded collections can be searched at the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation’s website or at FamilySearch in three collections, representing three distinct periods of migration history.
New York Passenger Lists (Castle Garden) 1820-1891
New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island) 1892-1924
New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists 1925-1957
The ship manifests list passengers, their names, age, last place of residence, who is sponsoring them in America, the port of departure, and their date of arrival in New York Harbor and sometimes other interesting information, such as how much money they carried on them, number of bags, and where on the ship they resided during its sail from overseas.
Destination Canada
What the announcement didn’t mention is that this collection is not just for Americans. The New York Passenger Lists (Castle Garden) 1820-1891 passenger lists include many immigrants whose final destination was Canada. Perhaps the other collections include those destined for Canada, but I did not find any at quick glance.
In the passenger lists for Castle Garden, 1820-1891, I found my ancestors who arrived in New York in 1861 and soon after made their way to Brampton, Ontario. In the column, “The country to which they intend to become inhabitants,” Canada is indicated. In fact, Canada is listed as the destination for many passengers.
To discover the final destination, you must look at the image of the original passenger list, not the transcription.
If there is a way to filter the search results to show only passengers heading to Canada, I could not find it.
Castle Garden
A lesser known fact is that what is known today as “Ellis Island” didn’t exist before 1892. Ellis Island’s predecessor — Castle Garden — was actually the United States’ first immigration centre. Today it is known as Castle Clinton National Park, a 25-acre waterfront historical park located within The Battery, one of New York City’s oldest parks and the departure point for tourists visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Once again familysearch titles are not even remotely close to the actual contents of the data base. I expected New York Passenger Lists (Castle Garden) 1820-1891 to be passengers who arrived at Castle Garden between 1820 and 1891. But what it really is is people who were BORN between 1820 and 1891 and rarely anyone born before 1826. Once again I will not find my immigrant grandparents. Big disappointment.
Really? I hadn’t noticed, but will take another look at the Castle Garden collection. Thanks.
I wanted to check this out myself. I searched the Castle Garden (1820-1891) collection for “Smith” with no other filters. That search returned 72,393 results. Just a few lines down, we see Elizabeth Smith, born 1799, arriving in 1836. There are many more whose births predate 1820. See: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-5L9F-MT?i=756&cc=1849782. My suggestion might be to use much broader filters without narrowing it down with too much information. That will help to offset transcription errors and other errors that were simply wrong to begin with.
Thought this might help…
I’m afraid Toni is wrong. There are a few clues that indicate her comment is incorrect without even checking.
First, does anyone really think that FamilySearch volunteers scrolled through thousands of ships manifest extracting ages of passengers?
Second, one might expect the majority on lists of ships arriving 1820-1891 to be born during that time! There couldn’t be any born after 1891 (duh!) and there would be a minority born pre 1820.
Lastly I had a quick search for SMITH and in the first 5 “hits” 3 were born before 1820.
Elizabeth Smith
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891
birth:
1799
United States
immigration:
1836
New York City, New York, United States
J K Smith
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891
birth:
1816
United States
immigration:
1856
New York City, New York, United States
Wm R Smith
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891
birth:
1796
New York
immigration:
1823
New York City, New York, United States
Thank you. I found my 3 x great grandfather Benjamin GUTHRIE and his wife and children arriving from Ireland in 1844. The family lived in Philadelphia, however daughter Elizabeth arrived with her husband William AUSTIN in Simcoe County Ontario in the 1850s. I had incorrectly identified Elizabeth GUTHRIE as arriving in New York in 1846 on the “SARACEN”, alone, occupation servant. I now know her parents ages/dates of birth which may lead to new discoveries.
Benjamin Guthrie
New York Passenger Lists
Name Benjamin Guthrie
Event Type Immigration
Event Date 1844
Event Place New York City, New York, United States
Gender Male
Age 76
Birth Year (Estimated) 1768
Birthplace Ireland
Ship Name Samsen
Fabulous discovery! Thanks for sharing.