Product benefits
- Discover your immigrant ancestors’ homelands and learn
the details of their journeys to America.
- Explore more than 10 million names from passenger lists
and naturalization records spanning the 1500s to the 1900s.
- Search exclusive records—find your ancestors in the never before indexed Nineteenth
Century New York Passenger Lists.
- View actual ship passenger lists, and learn the names
of those who traveled with your ancestors.
- Watch this collection grow in value. We’ll add new records on a regular basis
so you’ll never reach an impasse with your research.
Need more help deciding?
- View exclusive content that has never before been
published on the Internet.
- Every port of arrival in the U.S. and Canada is represented
in this collection including Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New Orleans.
- Passenger lists represent
one of the largest and most consistent forms of recordkeeping
for the entire nation.
- Study the histories of various
immigrant groups ranging from the Mayflower pilgrims
of 1620 to the Irish famine
refugees of the 1840s.
- Learn the names, ages, and
physical characteristics of your ancestors and their
family members.
Learn More About U.S. Immigration Collection
What are passenger lists?
The greatest wave of American immigration lasted from
the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.
In 1819 (in order to alleviate overcrowding on passenger
ships), the United States Congress enacted legislation
to regulate the transport of passengers from foreign
ports to the United States. As a provision of this act,
ships’ captains were required to submit a list
of passengers to the collector of customs in the district
in which the ship arrived. The legislation also required
that captains note "the age, sex, and occupation
of said passengers, respectively, the country to which
they severally belong, and that of which it is their
intention to become inhabitants."
Passenger lists are among the most important sources
for genealogists. From passenger lists, family historians
can learn an ancestor’s age, occupation, port
and date of departure and arrival, destination and the
name of the ship on which the ancestor traveled.
What
are naturalization records?
Naturalization records captured the timeline of events
wherein an immigrant to the United States declared his
or her intention of becoming a full-fledged citizen.
Under the Basic Naturalization Act of 1906, naturalization
forms became standardized and were sent to the U.S.
Bureau of Immigration, later the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS), for examination. The formalized process
required that a prospective citizen file a declaration
of intention in which he or she renounced allegiance
to foreign sovereignties. Following a waiting period
of five years, an immigrant could then petition a federal
court for formal citizenship.
Naturalization forms typically included the applicant’s
name, age, place and date of birth, allegiance, and
the date of the declaration. After 1866, the forms usually
offered a physical description (including height, weight,
eye color, complexion, and identifying marks), a current
place of residence, last foreign address, the name of
the ship, and the port and date of entry.
Why search these records online?
Traditionally, online
family historians have had to deal with a
lack of immigration information
available on the Internet, turning instead to endless
rolls of microfilm housed in faraway and inconvenient
archive offices. Ancestry.com has compiled this
exclusive collection of historical records and databases to
help you overcome your research roadblocks.
Take a Flash tour of the U.S. Immigration
Collection.
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