Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

From whence came our ancestors?

I will not address the politics of immigration here, although there are intersections of Jewish immigration and politics. Instead, I’ll focus on our ancestors’ arrival, and how to find their records. Why? Depending on when they arrived, those records can be the key to finding where they were born or lived, so that we can search the records in that particular place and go back more generations.

Immigrants were not required to become citizens, and not all wanted to. Some didn’t, so no immigration documents exist for them. Older immigrants generally did not have a compelling reason to learn English and American civics, or go through the long process of naturalization. But younger immigrants did — they wanted to vote, and be seen as true Americans.

Let’s first define what these records are.

Ship or Passenger Manifest

This records our specific ancestors arriving on a certain date, at a certain port.

They will have usually emigrated from the nearest port in Europe — which could have been hundreds of miles from their home.

Much information can be gleaned from these lists. Don’t assume your ancestor automatically came through Ellis Island (or Castle Gardens before 1892.) Some came through Philadelphia, Baltimore or Boston.

Declaration of Intention, or First Papers

These are documents filed in a US court, to declare the intention to become a US citizen. Generally, one had to be in the US for two years to file.

Petition for Naturalization

This was the end of the process, and usually took an additional three years before the immigrants could go back to court and be granted citizenship.

Immigrants could choose where to file any of these documents: local, county, state or federal. They could start or finish the process in different courts — just to make our research more interesting.

Certificate of Naturalization

This was given to immigrants upon completion of the process, and could be shown to others as proof of citizenship.

It didn’t have much information on it, unlike the preceding documents. If your ancestor kept anything, this would be it.

Due to politics and policy changes, the amount of detail on the first three records is dependent on the date they arrived.

If they naturalized before 1906, ship manifests varied in required information — different courts asked for more or less details. Generally, the earlier the immigration, the fewer the details.

After Sept. 27, 1906, the process was standardized and could only be done in a federal court. Simultaneously, shipping lines were required to collect and record more details about their passengers.

How do we find these documents? For passenger manifests, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) holds most ship manifests — but you don’t have to go there to find them.

They have been microfilmed and digitized, and are available  online in one or several databases:

Ancestry (ancestry.com), FamilySearch, MyHeritageFind My Past or the Ellis Island database.

FamilySearch and Ellis Island are the two free databases (you’ll need an account), although Ancestry probably has the best search engine.

You can often get a free trial with the paid subscription sites.

If you are very lucky, you can find your ancestors ship manifest though a name search on the aforementioned databases. This doesn’t happen very often, however. Most people don’t know the ship name nor the year — let alone the exact date — their immigrant ancestors arrived. Many times, the immigrants themselves forgot the exact year.

This information is critical, if a search doesn’t turn them up.

Complicating your search, your ancestor’s name might be Sam Cohen (or any other common name) — or misspelled or mistranscribed. What then?

I’ll answer that question in addition to where to find other immigration documents in the next column.

Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply