Tracing Immigrant Ancestors: Passenger Lists, Naturalisation Records and the Village of Origin

How to find where an immigrant ancestor came from using passenger manifests, naturalisation papers, church records and clues in the destination country.

For many families the hardest step is the ocean. On one side you have a grandfather who arrived in New York, Hamburg or Liverpool; on the other, a village whose name nobody remembers correctly. The bridge is built from records created on both sides of the voyage. Here is where to look.

Start in the destination country

Records made after arrival often name the place of origin, and they are usually easier to search:

• Naturalisation papers: from 1906 in the United States, the declaration of intention and the petition give the exact birthplace, the date of arrival and the ship. Earlier papers are thinner but still name the country.
• Church records in the new parish: marriages of immigrants frequently record the parish of baptism, especially in Catholic and Lutheran churches that required proof of baptism.
• Death certificates and obituaries: the informant may have given the town of birth.
• Draft registration cards (1917–1918 and 1940–1942 in the US) give the birthplace and date.
• Letters, prayer books and photographs kept by the family, often with a photographer's stamp from the home town.

Passenger lists

Passenger manifests were kept at the ports of departure and arrival:

• Arrival lists: US federal lists from 1820, with much more detail from 1893 (last residence) and 1907 (birthplace and nearest relative in the old country). Canadian lists from 1865. Australian lists by state.
• Departure lists: the Hamburg lists (1850–1934) and the Bremen lists (partially surviving) are the key sources for Central and Eastern Europeans. British outward lists survive from 1890.

Search by surname with spelling variants and by the ship and date once you know them from a naturalisation record. Look at everyone travelling from the same village; they were often relatives or neighbours.

Working out the village

The place written on a manifest is frequently a misspelling of a village name heard through an accent. Techniques that help:

• Search for the name in a historical gazetteer of the region, allowing for phonetic spelling.
• Check the province or district also given on the record.
• Look for the same surname in the parish records of candidate villages.
• Use DNA matches whose trees point to one district.

Crossing to the old country

Once you have a village, find the parish it belonged to and the archive that holds the registers. For Central and Eastern Europe, see our Polish and Eastern European genealogy guide. The baptism record of your immigrant, with the parents' names, is the link that joins the two halves of your tree.

Recording the migration

Record the emigration as an EMIG event with the date and port, the immigration as IMMI, and the naturalisation as NATU, each with its source. In a family history book these events make a natural chapter: the decision, the journey, the first years. On a chart, the immigrant is often the person in the middle of an hourglass: ancestors from the old country above, descendants in the new one below.