Ancestry Magazine

Do you treasure a generations-old oral tradition that an ancestor of yours was born at sea while the family was immigrating to America? Or that an ancestor died at sea, never making it to the &qu ot;Promised Land?” Many American genealogists begin the search for an immigrant ancestor’s ship with rich family lore. Some have been told that their forebear made his way across the ocean as a stowaway. Others are sure that the immigrant ancestor worked his way over as a member of the ship’s crew, then jumped ship. Will finding an arrival record for your ancestor help to prove or disprove such cherished family stories?

If the event occurred prior to 1820, when the U.S. government started keeping passenger lists of ships arriving from foreign ports, chances are slim that any public record will indicate the accuracy of the oral tradition. However, if the event occurred since 1820, your chances increase dramatically.

Births and Deaths at Sea
Customs Passenger Lists. Passenger lists dating from 1820 to about 1891 (depending on the port) are called Customs Passenger Lists because collecting and keeping them was a function of the Bureau of Customs. Many of these lists included a separate column for recording deaths that occurred while the vessel was crossing to North America. On lists not having such a column, it was common practice to add information about deaths at sea (as well as births) to the end of the list as the events happened.

For example, the last line of the passenger list of the Neptune, arriving in New York from Liverpool on 2 September 1865, reads: “Infant Spann Born Aug. 29 see No 385.” And at passenger number 385 (just below “John Spann, 49, male, servant, Ireland”) appears: “Mary Ann do, 30, female, servant, Ireland”–with the inserted notation: “Infant born aug. 29th.” (see figures 1 and 2)

Philadelphia Baggage Lists. If your family arrived at the port of Philadelphia between 1800 and 1819 inclusive, you may find them named on a Baggage List. For instance, Casper Fradle boarded the Cordelia in Amsterdam with his wife, Barbara, and their five daughters, Barbara, M aria, Rachel, Elizabeth, and Anna. But by the time the family reached Philadelphia, it had grown. A sixth daughter had been born at sea and was named Cordelia. (see figure 3)

Similarly recorded on the passenger manifest were deaths at sea. The last five lines of the list of the American Union, which sailed into New York from Liverpool on 16 August 1865, bear witness to a particularly tragic crossing:

Deaths

189 Costello Thomas 12 months 28th July 1865

454 McNulty Patrick 8 ” 2nd ”

589 Buesly Albert 13 ” 27th ”

314 Moorehouse Charles 14 ” 2nd Aug. ”

327 Joseph Campbell 2 years 7th ”

Inserted at each child’s entry in the passenger list is a notation of his death with the date. The transatlantic voyage seems to have been hardest on the little ones.

The body of a passenger who died onboard a sailing vessel bound for the United States was normally “committed to the deep.” A respectful though brief service would be intoned, followed by immediate burial at sea. There are also rare instances of corpses being preserved until the ship docked, and then being buried in a local cemetery. Therefore, it is possible to find an inscribed gravestone for a family member who died at sea in a cemetery of the port of entry.

Immigration Passenger Lists. Passenger lists dating from about 1891 through the mid-1950s are called Immigration Passenger Lists. Immigration affairs became separated from customs matters in 1891 when a Bureau of Immigration was created in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Respons-ibility for collecting and keeping these lists would ultimately fall to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

You might find some clue regarding a birth or death at sea handwritten on the Immigration Passenger List by the individual’s name (similar to the older Customs Passenger Lists). Immigration officials routinely annotated the manifests while inspecting the new arrivals. For instance, depending on the year and the laws in effect at the time, a naturalized U.S. citizen who went back to his native land and then returned with a wife and children could be required to prove his American citizenship before being allowed re-entry into the country with his family. If the foreign-born citizen did not have his citizenship certificate with him, immigration officials would wire the court where the naturalization had taken place for the required confirmation. The results of this inquest would be penned hastily on the naturalized American’s line in the passenger list.

To many twentieth-century Immigration Passenger Lists, a “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” and a “Record of Detained Aliens” would be appended after the ship had docked and the passengers had been inspected by U.S. officials. These supplemental lists were microfilmed with the original ship passenger lists to which they were appended.

Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry. A “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” names the passengers who were detained at the immigrant receiving station pending a hearing by a Board of Special Inquiry. It records the reason for the detention, the action taken by the Board, and whether the passenger was admitted or deported. If, for instance, a passenger arrived with measles and had to spend time in quarantine, the Cause of Detention column might show DCD for “detected contagious disease,” or LCD for “likely contagious disease,” followed by the date the passenger was admitted.

A passenger who did not possess the minimum amount of cash required for admittance would be noted as l.p.c. for “likely public charge,” and detained until the necessary funds arrived from a relative or friend. An unmarried woman traveling alone, especially a young one, was sometimes detaine d until a male relative or fiance came to the immigrant facility to escort her (in the case of a fiance, after marrying her) to her U.S. destination. “Under 16 unaccompanied,” “cannot read,” “illiterate,” and “senility” are other notations found in “Records of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry.”

It was in the “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” that births and deaths at sea were recorded. By the age of steam, crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean was accomplished in so little time that deceased passengers’ bodies could be kept for burial upon arrival in the United States. They no longer had to be buried at sea. Your chances of finding a gravestone, therefore, increase in the twentieth century. And no longer would the interment necessarily have taken place in the port of entry; the body may well have been shipped by train to the family’s plot in any cemetery in the country.

Record of Detained Aliens. A “Record of Detained Aliens” lists the passengers who were detained at the immigrant receiving station for reasons not requiring a hearing by a Board of Special Inquiry. The “Cause of Detention” is almost always a lack of sufficient funds that was remedied with a phone call. These passengers were admitted as soon as money arrived.

Civil Registration of Births and Deaths. By the twentieth century, states required the civil registration of births and deaths that occurred on ships arriving at the state’s ports. In that case, you would obtain the birth or death record as you would any other from the state’s bureau of vital statistics. To learn how, visit <www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm>.

Stowaways

Customs Passenger Lists. A person who secreted himself onboard ship in order to secure free passage was called a “stowaway.” Although the practice may be as old as seafaring, the term dates only from 1850. Prior to federal legislation of the last quarter of the nineteenth century which restricted specified classes of aliens from entering the United States, stowaways who made it to American shores generally faced no opposition from government officials. It was the ship’s captain they had to fear. The names of stowaways discovered at sea, or when the vessel docked, were added to the end of the passenger list, similar to births.

Immigration Passenger Lists. Stricter immigration law enacted in 1891 sought to encourage steamship companies to be more careful about the people they brought to the United States. The laws stipulated that the steamship lines were responsible for providing return passage for any of their passengers who failed to meet U.S. immigration requirements. Nevertheless, stowaways who were discovered and who passed the legal and medical examinations were still admitted into the country. For example, the SS Round Brook, pulling into Boston Harbor from Barbados on 13 October 1905, had on board one “Isaac Williams, 32, black, stowaway.”

By 1911, the ever-rising number of stowaways and deserting seamen (discussed below) prompted a congressional inquiry. Hearings Relative to Alien Seamen and Stowaways, the committee’s report, numbered “Alien stowaways found onboard vessels arriving at ports of the United States, fiscal year ended 30 June 1910″ at 474. The report recommended stricter policy regarding the admission of aliens who arrived as stowaways or deserting seamen. Still, the 1912 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration indicated that the number of alien stowaways had risen to 528. It was not until 1917 that new legislation included “stowaways,” per se, in a long list of excludable classes of aliens.

Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry. A stowaway’s name might also be entered into the “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry,” if such a list was appended to the ship’s manifest. Discovered stowaways who did not have sufficient funds were deemed “l.p.c.” and deported. (see figure 4) Other stowaways, however, were admitted as refugees.

Crew List. Furthermore, the name of a stowaway might be found on the ship’s crew list because stowaways discovered en route were often impressed into service to earn their passage to America. Stowaways who succeeded in remaining undetected were, of course, never recorded on any list of any kind, passenger or crew.

Jumping Ship

Many American families treasure the oral tradition that their immigrant ancestor “worked his way over” as a member of the ship’s crew, or that he was a crew member who “jumped ship” when the vessel entered port. (The expression “jumped ship” means that the man entered the United States clandestinely, not that he literally leapt from the deck of the vessel into the water.) Prior to the legal restrictions of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, persons entering the country in these ways met with no resistance from the U.S. government. With the advent of immigration legislation, however, crewmen seeking admission to the United States were subject to the same legal and medical requirements as other aliens.

By 1911, the increasing number of alien seamen deserting their ships in U.S. ports, as well as a highly publicized Supreme Court case of 1910, prompted Congress to take action. The case had revealed that men were being smuggled into the country through the complicity of certain steamship lines. The men would pay the shipping company to record them fraudulently as members of the crew, and then, when the ship entered port and the seamen were granted shore leave, these so-called “seamen” would simply never reboard for the return passage. Hearings Relative to Alien Seamen and Stowaways (the congressional report cited above) numbered “Deserting alien seamen, fiscal year ended June 30, 1910,” at 9,816. The Annual Report of the Commissioner General o f Immigration for 1912, though, set the number at 6,594, a reduction of two-thirds.

Two Kinds of Federal “Crew Lists.” Still, the numbers remained high until the immigration legislation of 1917. That law’s long enumeration of classes of excludable aliens enhanced the prerogative of U.S. officials to deport seamen, and aliens posing as seamen, who jumped ship. It required that a “List or Manifest of Aliens Employed on the Vessel as Members of Crew” be appended to every ship arriving in U.S. ports from overseas as well as a “Statement of Master of Vessel Regarding Changes in Crew Prior to Departure.” (see figure 5) Crew lists on microfilm at the National Archives, therefore, may help prove or disprove the family tradition about your ancestor.

There are crew lists for vessels arriving at Boston, 1917—43; Detroit, 1946—57; Gloucester, Mass., 1918—43; New Bedford, Mass., 1917—43; New Orleans, 1910—45; New York, 1897—1957; San Francisco, 1896—1954; and Seattle, 1890—1957. These lists may contain the names of both American and alien seamen. The amount of information they provide about each crew member varies, but may include his length of service at sea, position in the ship’s company, when and where he joined the vessel’s crew, whether he was to be discharged at the port of arrival, and the seaman’s age, race, nationality, height, weight, and literacy.

Non-Federal Crew Lists. Unfortunately, the National Archives has no crew lists other than these. But crew lists that are not federal records may still exist. They would be found among the private records of ship companies housed today in archives and libraries around the country. Locating them would entail a search of repositories with manuscript collections. Likewise for the crew lists of merchant vessels, although if you know the name of the ship on which your ancestor served, you might start your search at “Michael Palmer’s Lis t of Merchant Vessels” online at <www.geocities.com/mppraetorius>.

If you have been told a story about a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century ancestor who was born or died at sea, who came to America as a stowaway, or who was a seaman who jumped ship, you may have a hard time finding documentary evidence to corroborate or dispute the family tradition. But if the ancestor in question was a nineteenth- or twentieth-century immigrant, U.S. Passenger Arrival Records dramatically improve your chances of proving or disproving the treasured family lore. a

John Philip Colletta, Ph.D., is a faculty member of the institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also conducts workshops for the National Archives and teaches genealogy courses at universities in the Washington, D.C. area. He has authored numerous articles as well as the best-selling book They Came in Ships (Ancestry, 2002).

Further Reading

American Immigration Policies, A History, by Marion T Bennett (Public Affairs Press, 1963). Discusses immigration legislation from colonial times through the twentieth century.

They Came in Ships: A Guide to Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor’s Arrival Record, 3rd ed. by John Philip Colletta (Ancestry, 2002). Describes available records and indexes, colonial times to mid-twentieth century, and explains how to find one passenger among the millions. Extensive bibliography.

A History of American Immigration, 1820-1924, by George M. Stephenson (Russell, 1926). Describes ethnic group immigrants to the United States.