Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (61 page)

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Various publications also provide lists of emigrants to North America and are worth viewing:

    
  C. Boyer has edited four books that include lists of migrants:
Ships' Passenger Lists: The South (1538
–
1825)
;
National and New England (1600
–
1825)
;
New York and New Jersey (1600
–
1825)
;
Pennsylvania and Delaware (1641
–
1825)
.

    
  P. W. Filby and M. K. Meyer (eds.),
Passenger and Immigration Lists Index
, 13 volumes. A thorough list, including approximately 2.5 million names of migrants arriving in the United States and Canada from the sixteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

    
  J. C. Hotten,
Original Lists of Persons Emigrating to America, 1600
–
1700
.

    
  David Dobson,
Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America 1625
–
1825
was drawn from a number of original sources held at The National Archives.

• The National Archives holds a unique and detailed list of emigrants to North America between 1773 and 1776 in T47/9–12. The list provides names, ages, employment, residence and departure information for all those leaving.

One extremely useful online source for anyone tracing individuals who arrived in the United States through New York is the online database at www.ellisisland.org. The island was used as a major immigration station for all migrants arriving in the United States from 1892 to 1954, with over 20 million people arriving during that period. Most poor arrivals had to pass a physical examination in order to be allowed entry to the country at the island. The website has a searchable database for all those arriving between 1892 and 1924 which can be used free of charge
.

Emigrants who left during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be traced using the passenger lists mentioned above. Additionally, many archives in the United States, such as the National Archives in Washington, contain information on their new settlers.

British colonization of Canada began at the same time as that of the rest of North America, although French settlers had been arriving in small numbers since the sixteenth century. After many conflicts between France and Britain over control of the territory, the French ceded the eastern part of Canada to the British in 1763 and thereafter it became the sole possession of Britain. The Hudson Bay Company was the main British organization involved in Canada, establishing small outposts since its inception in 1670.

Once Britain gained control of Canada, large numbers of emigrants arrived from the British Isles, particularly from Scotland and Ireland, and especially after America gained its independence in 1783. Such migration was actively encouraged by the Canadian authorities up until the twentieth century as a way of populating the vast land.

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The Hudson Bay Company's records include journals of early settlers. Microfilm copies of these records can be found at The National Archives, in series BH 1. The original records can be found in Canada, as are the majority of records relating to immigration to the country.

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The National Archives of Canada has an online exhibition detailing the immigrant experience, titled ‘Moving Here, Staying Here: The Canadian Immigrant Experience'. It can be found at http:// www.collectionscanada.ca/immigrants/index-e.html and has an online database searchable by name for people arriving between 1925 and 1935. The website also includes a database of passenger lists from 1865 to 1922 that can be searched at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/passenger/001045–100.01-e.php. However, there is no name index of this database and it is only possible to search by the name of the ship.

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Another website which has a wealth of information concerning the Canadian immigration experience worth viewing is http://www.ist. uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.

Canada was also a major destination for child migrants from Britain, with approximately 100,000 such children arriving in Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their arrival may be traced in the Canadian sources mentioned above. Additionally, The National Archives also contains some records relating to this scheme, although they mainly concern general policy and do not contain specific lists of child migrants. They can be found in MH 102, covering the years 1910 to 1962.

Although convict settlement in Australia is infamous, the vast island was actually populated in greater numbers by free settlers. Many free settlers came due to economic factors and the hope of a better standard of life, and the numbers arriving swelled after the discovery of gold in the 1850s. Indeed migration to the country, including the celebrated ‘ten pound poms' who were offered assisted passage by the Australian government, was very much encouraged well into the twentieth century, with the ‘White Australia Policy' active from the 1890s to the late 1950s.

Along with the general passenger lists that record people leaving the UK and Ireland discussed above, there are other sources specific to Australia that may be of relevance. These can be found in the UK and in various Australian archives.

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The National Archives has a number of important records for newly arrived Australian migrants. The Colonial Office papers relating to the governance of New South Wales during the nineteenth century all contain names of emigrants. They can be found in series CO 201, CO 202, CO 360 and CO 369.

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The government took various censuses of convicts in New South Wales and Tasmania at various points from 1788 onwards. Although primarily concerned with recording convicts, they would also include those who were not transported. It is possible to find other genealogical data, such as age and occupation of these individuals, in these censuses, found in series HO 10.

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The Society of Genealogists also has a good number of records on new emigrants to Australia, including indexes to birth, marriages and deaths that occurred in the individual states.