Finding Your Ancestors Who Came Over From Another Country
Posted
The Tree Shaker-
Have you ever considered a passport application to be a genealogy research tool. Passports have been issued in the United States since the late 1700s, but weren’t required except during times of war until 1941. Passport applications can be a great place to learn a immigrant’s date of arrival to the United States, the arrival ship and date of naturalization. Passports expire every few years, so people reapply. So you may find multiple applications for those who have traveled to and from the United States on more than one occasion. In the earlier years, look for married women and young children in group passports which is under the name of the head of household. The original United States passports applications can be found on the National Archives website at www.archives.gov/research/passport. There are also lots of the passport applications until the mid 1920s on www.familysearch.org and www.ancestry.com. If you know that your family came from in at Ellis Island in New York, you can also view the immigration records for free at www.myheritage.com/immigration. Those records range from the 1500s to the 1900s. Another website to find your relative’s arrival information is on www.libertyellisfoundation.org. They have a good resource of information listed under the passenger lists. Another good resource for immigration records is www.castlegarden.org.
