How Did Our Immigrant Ancestors Get Here?

Many of us spend countless hours of genealogical research time searching for records for our immigrant ancestors. Our forebears arrived here either by land or by sea, depending on when they settled on this continent, and not all came of their own free will. We have learned more in the last few decades about how Native Americans made the trek from Asia, how early groups came north from Central and South America, and how those who arrived in bondage were transported in horrible conditions on overcrowded sailing vessels. Many of our people only arrived in the last few hundred years, and we find ourselves wanting to know when and from where they came. But perhaps we might also think about how. Clearly, they did not swim! What kinds of vessels did they travel on? How many sails or steam funnels were on them? How many decks? Most ships that our more recent ancestors used did not resemble the elegance of the Titanic, nor did most of our ancestors dine on unlimited buffets or have scenic balconies leading to well-ventilated cabins. In fact, most of our ancestors did not have cabins at all, but more likely single bunks and limited, shared eating and sleeping areas. Wouldn’t it be satisfying to find out more about the ships on which your ancestors traveled? Well, with a little bit of time and effort, you probably can.

There are a number of websites that specialize in immigrant ships. Here are a few:

The Ships List: http://www.theshipslist.com

This is a site that has been active since 1997 but has not been updated in the past five years. However, it is a good place to begin because of its ease of use and wide variety of databases. You can find information about hundreds of ships as well as passenger lists, photos, timetables, and more. A real treat is the huge list of fleets, each a live link to a company with extensive information on its history. For instance, see this excerpt from the popular Hamburg-American Packet Company, sailing from Hamburg, Germany, to dozens of ports in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. You can find the list of fleets at http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/index.htm.

Ancestry: Passenger Ships and Images

If you are a subscriber to Ancestry (or you can access it in your local library), you will be happy to know that they have a database called “Passenger Ships and Images” that includes more than 1,000 ship images. For each ship in the database, you will find who built it and what line it sailed under, a physical description, and its history. You can search for a specific ship, by keyword, or you can browse the collection by alphabet. Here is the S.S. Rotterdam, the ship that carried one of my immigrant families to Boston in the early 1900s.  

The Great Ocean Liners: http://thegreatoceanliners.com

This is a smaller collection that might be helpful in searching a variety of vessels. Although only containing about 100 ships, there is a lot of information on the site, and, in spite of the name, they are not all ocean liners. Here, for instance, is the Washington, originally a paddle-steamer, it “became the first twin-screw liner on the North Atlantic run.” The articles are very well-written and interesting, and the accompanying photos are delightful. Clicking on each of those circles shown below will bring up a large clear image. 

Great Ships: https://greatships.net/

One last site worth mentioning is based on a postcard collection of a man named Jeff Newman. The collection was sold in the early 2000s, but the images and some detailed narratives are still on the website. Although the site is no longer being updated, what is there is quite extensive. As you can see on the left, you can search by the name of the ship or the company that owned it or you can click on the “Index of Ships on the Site” link for a complete list. 

Below is information on the City of Berlin, which carried my great-grandfather to New York in 1890. Notice it had a combination of sails and smokestacks! According to the article, in her heyday, this was the fastest ship on the North Atlantic, and she was one of the first ships with electric lighting, which must have been quite an unexpected surprise for an emigrant traveling in steerage from Eastern Europe. 

Don’t forget there are books on passenger ships as well as museums dedicated to maritime events. This is the kind of information that, although not essential to your research, adds “the meat on the bones” and brings your ancestors to life. Have fun learning more about how they got here!