[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] BALCH INSTITUTE IMMIGRATION RECORDS NOW ON FAMILYSEARCH WEBSITE -- FYI

[K GRUENEICHCAREY]

Thanks to Eveline for bringing this new collection on the Familysearch website to our notice.
However, when I tried finding my ancestors on it, the info was not very helpful. THE NAMES OF 
THE IMMIGRANTS' SHIPS WERE MISSING!!
  Having seen the original 6 volume work by the same group for "Immigrants from the 
Russian Empire", this omission is a terrible waste of effort by the FHL people!!
Several ships arrived on the same date & it is most helpful to know the fellow passengers, 
for clues to neighbors & relatives...
  As it is, the 6 volume work has numerous errors & omissions in the data itself. There 
were 2 detailed critiques of the Balch Institute work by Gordon Remington & Michael
Palmer, when the volumes started appearing. 
See this reference from the Rootsweb mailing list APG -- 
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/apg/1999-07/0931648450
" Gordon also did a statistical analysis
>for the years 1850-51, evaluating not only the extent of the omissions but
>the type. Among the results that he reports: In the 4 random months he
>chose to analyze, among the dozens of omitted ships he found with both
>Irish and German passengers were 8 ships that DO meet the 80% requirement.
>In fact, every passenger was explicitly said to be German or Irish,
>respectively, except for 2 people on one of the ships."...
 
Sounds like the Steve Morse One-Step website (www.stevemorse.org)is much better, 
since he searches several immigrant databases & returns digital copies of the 
images for researchers to see & analyze for themselves...
 
KMC