who paid for passage on ship manifests

[roobyred]

Is there a way to find out how much our ancestors paid for their trips to/from America? My paternal grandparents went back and forth numerous times. Just wondering what the cost was.
Any ideas?
Roberta

[carubia]

The manifests often indicated who paid for the ticket, and how much cash the person had on them, but not how much the ticket cost, I think. I do have somewhere in my house a ticket from my GGF's 2nd wife's trip to America in the 1930s that indicated the cost (in Lira, of course). I'll try to find it.

[Tessa78]

Is there a way to find out how much our ancestors paid for their trips to/from America? My paternal grandparents went back and forth numerous times. Just wondering what the cost was.
Any ideas?
Roberta

Hello Roberta

You may be interested in these two links...

The first is an archive site with many images of actual steamship tickets belonging to immigrants from Europe 1800's - 1950's.
http://www.gjenvick.com/Immigration/Imm ... z37GMyszvV

The second site is a reprint of an article in The Nation dated June 1904, telling how steamship steerage passage rates from several English and Scottish ports to New York, were being reduced to $10, from $25.

http://www.gjenvick.com/Steerage/1904-0 ... z37GMyszvV

T.

[roobyred]

Awesome, Thank you! Roberta

[carubia]

Just to follow up my previous post, I did locate the card that I was thinking of. It's a red, postcard-size paper with the ship name, departure date, passenger's name, company that issued the ticket, and class (3rd class). No price is indicated on it. It seems that another paper was attached to it, since the staple remained. Maybe that had the price on it.

[johnnyonthespot]

I found this 1906 article using the search tool at NYTIMES.COM. It would appear that the full steerage fare at the time was $30 New York -> Naples.



http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 946797D6CF

Some might recall that the Carpathia was the first ship to reach and rescue some of the Titanic passengers after that ship went down in April, 1912.

There may very well have been other ships with lower steerage rates, but $30 could probably be considered a good "ballpark" figure.

[TerraLavoro]

Thanks for that post, that piece is a great find. Some of my family sailed on the SS Cretic to Boston (from Naples) in 1915.....but in cabin class.
If a steerage ticket was $30, I wonder how much a 2nd class ticket cost?

[roobyred]

These are great finds.
Loved reading them. Thanks so much to all of you!
A scan of that ticket would be interesting too.
Roberta

[erudita74]

Thanks for that post, that piece is a great find. Some of my family sailed on the SS Cretic to Boston (from Naples) in 1915.....but in cabin class.
If a steerage ticket was $30, I wonder how much a 2nd class ticket cost?

I've read it cost the equivalent of $20 more for a 2nd class ticket.

Erudita

[carubia]

Here's the ticket. The scan may be a little hard to read, but the ship was the Conte Di Savoia. The departure was 24 Jan 1940. After the departure date it says, "Anno XVIII"; I'm not sure what "Year 18" meant. The 3rd class ticket was issued by the Palermo branch of the Societa' Anonima di Navigazione. She had completed the necessary "health care operations." Does anyone have any idea what they were?

[roobyred]

Thank you so much. It's just fascinating to see and read.
Roberta

[johnnyonthespot]

Here you can find digitized copies of Italy's La Stampa newspaper, 1867 - 2005. With some effort it should be possible to find advertisements for steamship travel to the US. http://www.archiviolastampa.it/componen ... /Itemid,3/

And here is L'Unità, 1924 - 2008: http://archivio.unita.it/

Similarly, there is http://newspaperarchive.com/ for many US newspapers, though this is a pay site (and not very inexpensive, at that).

[roobyred]

Thanks so much for the info

[PippoM]

"Anno XVIII" is meant as the 18th year of "fascist age".
During the fascist period most (if not all) official documents had both dates.

[carubia]

Thanks, PippoM. I realized that after I had posted while I was looking at some civil records from the 1930s.