[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Passenger Lists from Germany

[Mike McHenry]

The EI and ancestry.com databases were extracted the ships manifest. These
were prepared by the ships crew. In the case of ships sailing from Bremen
and Hamburg these would be mostly German with German crews. Hence you have
Germans speaking to Germans. The problem mostly originates with the old
style of German hand writing. People extracting have a very difficult time
reading it. At Ellis Island index cards were made up for each immigrant by
the immigration authorities. I believe the process was similar at other
ports.

                                        Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org
[mailto:ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org] On Behalf Of Karl
Krueger
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 8:17 AM
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Passenger Lists from Germany

The discussion below brings up a good point. In the US we seem to get all
wrapped up in looking at ship lists entering the US with the names often
butchered because immigration officials did not speak the native tongues of
the immigrants. Certainly passenger lists made in Europe are likely to be
more accurate. To what extent do these passenger lists made in Europe exist.

   
  For example, in Ancestry I cannot find the immigrations of my wife's
gg-grandparents from Alsace-Lorraine in the mid 1800s (neither in New York
or Boston for people who settled in upper NY state). Could there be other
lists available made in Europe where their names may be found?

Paul Rakow <rakow at ifh.de> wrote:
  
Virginia, 

Since you said that the year was 1903, not 1902, the ship
"Bataviga" in the naturalisation papers must be the Batavia, 
sailed 25 May 1903 from Hamburg, arrived 8 June 1903 in NY. 

If you can't find Friedrich in the ancestry index, try looking
through the Batavia's passenger list page by page, and see if you 
can spot him - the indexer might have misread the name. 

You can also try the Hamburg passenger lists. If you need to
use the index that can be a bit complicated, but since you know 
ship and date it's easy. Just order the *direct* Hamburg passenger
list that covers May 1903, from the LDS, and look for the Batavia. 

In the 19th century the Hamburg lists are usually much better 
than the USA lists, because they always give a precise village for 
the last residence, while the US lists often just give a country or
province. By the 20th century the American lists had caught up, both
give similar information. 


Good Luck! 

Paul Rakow 
rakow at ifh.de 


 
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