Passenger lists: Where do I find them?

There are passenger lists scattered around the internet. Here are some of my favorite sites. They are all free (but registration is required for some of them), and they all have passenger lists of ships from Holland to the new world.

• Ellis Island. Registration is required to view scanned passenger lists.
• Castle Garden, America's first official immigration centre and Ellis Island's predecessor.
• National Archives of Australia record search. Their database includes passenger lists and immigration papers (only for arrivals in Australia, of course). If there is no scan of the record you want, you can order to have it scanned (for a small fee). Once the scan is available, it is freely accessible for everyone.
• Passenger lists before 1736 and passenger lists after 1736, an index to passenger lists on Digital Resources Netherlands and Belgium. Here, you will find links to many more passenger lists for ships carrying Dutch emigrants.
• Ships Passenger Lists to New Netherland, New York 1624 to 1664, on The Olive Tree Genealogy. While you're there, also check out the Dutch Immigration to USA & Canada section.
• The website of the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG), an organisation of volunteers transcribing passenger lists. They were founded in September 1998, so their tenth birthday is this month!
• Ships' Passenger Lists on On the Trail of Our Ancestors. The Dutch Research Corner on the same website seems to be somewhat outdated.
• The many passenger lists in the USGenWeb Archives.
• Immigrant Ships, on Macatawa Bay Area History & Heritage - a website about the history of West Michigan. From browsing this site I get the impression that everyone in this area has Dutch roots!
• There are several passenger lists on the website of Herman de Wit.

Trace your Ellis Island ancestors into The Netherlands

With the information you find on an Ellis Island passenger list, it is usually possible to trace Dutch immigrants in The Netherlands - in many cases using online sources.

Let's have a look at Franciscus and Geertruida van Valkenburg. They arrived on Ellis Island on 18 April 1911, on the S.S. Rijndam, with their 3 years old son Franciscus. According to the passenger list (which you can find on the website of the Ellis Island foundation), Franciscus was 31 and born in Oss, his wife Geertruida was 33 and born in Mill, and their son Franciscus was 3 years old and born in Berchem. Their last residence was Berchem. Their contact address in The Netherlands was Geertruida's mother, Mrs Wagemakers, who lived in Oss. They were on their way to Geertruida's brother, G. Wagemakers, in New York.

I started by searching Genlias for a Valkenburg - Wagemakers marriage (watch out for the "van" prefix in Dutch names - see my common pitfalls article). I had no problems finding what I was looking for: Franciscus van Valkenburg, born Mill en Sint Hubert, and Geertruda Johanna Wagemakers, born Oss, married 1 May 1906 in Oss. Their parents are Johannes van Valkenburg and Johanna Gommers, and Justinus Wagemakers and Geertruida de Groot.

Mill and Oss are in the province Noord-Brabant, so I also searched the main database at BHIC, where I found the birth of Franciscus: Franciscus van Valkenburg, born 9 July 1879 in Mill, son of Johannes van Valkenburg and Johanna Gommers.

Note that the Ellis Island passenger list has the birth places of Franciscus and Geertruida reversed.

For the marriage of Johannes van Valkenburg and Johanna Gommers I searched Genlias again, and I found: Johannes van Valkenburg, born 10 October 1839 in Oss, and Johanna Gommers, born 9 March 1848 in Sambeek, married on 3 May 1878 in Oss. Their parents are Francis van Valkenburg and Hestriena van Rosmalen, and Antoon Gommers and Catharina Lemmens.

There is more information on Johannes and Johanna on Genlias and BHIC, but let's continue with Johannes' parents. Their marriage is also on Genlias (and BHIC), but it took me a bit longer to find it, because the bride's name was spelled differently: Francis van Valkenburg, born 26 November 1812 in Oss, and Henrica van Roosmalen, born 9 March 1810 in Heesch, married 28 June 1834 in Oss. Parents are Johannes van Valkenburg and Maria van Straalen, and Antonie Petrus van Roosmalen and Maria van Grunsven.

We're getting close to 1811, the year the civil register was introduced. Online Dutch genealogy before 1811 is a lot harder than after 1811 (though certainly not impossible). The marriage of Johannes van Valkenburg and Maria van Straalen (taken from the church books) is on BHIC, but the parents are not listed anymore: Joannes Johannes van Valkenburg and Maria Francisci van Straales married on 5 April 1790 in Oss. Witnesses were Gijsbertus Ruijs and Joanna Gijsberta Ruijs. Johannes and Francisci were probably patronymics, which means their fathers were probably Johannes van Valkenburg and Franciscus van Straales (or Straalen?). That gives us a clue when we want to find the next generation, but I will not do that for this article.

So, starting with a listing on an Ellis Island passenger list, we were able to add three generations in the main line (Johannes, Francis and Johannes), and well over a century, all with freely accessible online resources!

There is a lot more information on Genlias and BHIC (and possibly other sites), also on siblings and, of course, other lines, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

There are more examples on tracing Dutch Ellis Island immigrants into The Netherlands in my article Trace your Ellis Island ancestors into The Netherlands and in the latest Trace your Dutch roots newsletter.

Book review: Ellis Island, by Loretto Dennis Szucs

The first chapters of the book describe the history of Ellis Island, and its role in American history. After reading the first two sentences of the book, we have already learned that Ellis Island is a "treshold of liberty" and "the symbolic shrine to freedom and opportunity". The first half of the book is filled with similar platitudes.

The author seems to be more interested in reinforcing romantic prejudices than in factual correctness. An example is name changes at Ellis Island. "Names were often a problem", writes Ms. Szucs. "Not all immigrants could spell their names, and baffled officials jotted down names as they sounded." Those officials handled thousands of immigrants, and it would take more than a foreign-sounding name to "baffle" them. Dick Eastman discussed the improbability of name changes at Ellis Island in his article Name Changes at Ellis Island: Fact or Fiction? (May 2001). His main arguments were the translators and interpreters employed by Ellis Island, the documents immigrants had to hand over, and the ships' passenger lists that would list their names. Ms. Szucs should have known better.

Another myth that the author reinforces but should have debunked is the "ocean journey that could last several months". The era of Ellis Island was also the era of steam ships. It took the ships of the Holland America Line ten days to get from Rotterdam to Ellis Island. Maybe the ocean journey "could last several months", in practice less than a couple of weeks was more likely. (Actually, it took the Mayflower two months and five days to get from Plymouth to Cape Cod in 1620, 272 years before Ellis Island opened.)

Later chapters are more down to earth, giving practical, useful (albeit terse) information on tracing immigrant ancestors (not limited to Ellis Island).