Hints or Favorite Tricks for locating passenger lists

[DebiHarbuck]

Looking for your favorite hints, backdoors, search-engines, what-have-you for finding passenger lists when the usual sources (Ancestry.com, Ellis Island, Castle Garden, FamilySearch, etc.) fail you.

I have an entire family that immigrated that I cannot locate. Frustrated doesn't begin to describe it.

[johnnyonthespot]

It can be slow going, but if you know a date/year of birth for one of them, try searching on first name only and year of birth plus/minus 1 year.

It would be a pain with a name like Giuseppe, but entirely practical with less common names (Leonilda and Egidio come to mind...).

PS: I don't think you can search without a surname at ellisisland.org, but you can at Ancestry . com.

[maestra36]

If searching Ellis Island records, I always use the www.stevemorse.org website. You can do all kinds of things on that website. If you have a town name, you can put in just the first letter of the first name and the first letter of the last name and the town name. You can then even do a sound search of the town name to yield even more results, as often town names were misspelled when they were transcribed into the search engine. You can do sound searches of the names and even a phonetic search. Sometimes a phonetic search will yield results which the other search options have not. I have found many ancestors using that website, by varying the options I select.

[Tessa78]

And keep in mind that some entered the country by crossing the borders from Canada and Mexico

T.

[adelfio]

I have found though one person can screw up your whole research.My last name is Adelfio back in th early 1900 one midwife decide to spell our name Aderfio what a ball of confusion she caused in our family I have corrected some of it online on ancestry but thats what happens one stoke of the pen and bang your gone...........

Marty A

[DebiHarbuck]

Thanks, everyone, for the ideas. Sometimes we just need a fresh perspective.

Tessa, I will go back and make sure I haven't overlooked a border crossing; but these Cracatans (whom I am beginning to think of as 'those damned Leone's!' ) have a fairly steady pattern of Napoli-to-Manhattan migration. [These people are going to drive me right around the bend before it's over.]

Marty, your story made me smile. I spent years looking for my g-grandfather in the 1910 census indexes, to no avail. When I finally had access to the actual microfilmed pages, I scrolled right to the address where he should have been....and there he was. Pietro Roccanova...plain as day. Then I discovered he had been indexed as "Parks Borzahura." I had to laugh to keep from crying. (And, I too made sure I corrected the index at Ancestry. Now when you look for him...he shows up.

[adelfio]

Deb I have something to show you that is interesting
http://img600.imageshack.us/i/lionebirth.jpg/
You we laugh at this one enjoy
Marty A

[DebiHarbuck]

Oh, that is funny.

[adelfio]

Did you go to italy for thise Saponara Di Grumneto records of Carmela?
Marty

[DebiHarbuck]

Marty - do you mean the records on my g-grandmother Maria Carmela Lattoraca?

[adelfio]

yes did you have someone get them for you
Marty

[DebiHarbuck]

No...I am very fortunate that the records for that part of Potenza have been not only microfilmed, but digitized and are available online at Ancestry.com.

Do you have family from Saponara di Grumento?

[adelfio]

I kinda thought they were digitized very clear they have done a terrific job on them...Most of my relatives come from Palermo either the town of Trabia or San Nicolo small towns but Ive been lucky with the FSL with microfilms some readable some soiled and hard to read. Thanks for the chat

Marty