Thursday, April 15, 2021

Manifest

The ship's manifest.  The document that tells you when your ancestor arrived in the 'new world'.  I have part of a manifest from 1923 which I chose because it is typed and you can mostly read it.  Earlier ones are hand-written and can be quite a challenge to decipher.

Page 1

Well, I didn't say YOU would be able to read it, lol.

The top line tells us that the Aquitania sailed from Cherbourg on the 21st April, 1923 and arrived on April 27. Name, age, sex, marital status, occupation, ability to read, write and in what language, the country of which they are a subject, i.e. Nationality, their race, their last permanent address, the closest relative in the country they left, and their final destination.  Believe me when I say you will love reading typed reports rather than the handwritten ones.

Page 2
Do you have a ticket to your final destination and who paid for it. Do you have $50 and if less or more how much?  Have you ever been in the United States before and if so where and when. Are you going to join a relative or friend and if so, who are they and what is their address?  Do you intend to return to your home country, how long to you plan to say, do you intend to become a citizen.  Ever in prison, a polygamist, an anarchist; state hair and eye color and where you were born.  A couple of the headings I cannot even read due to the quality of the picture.

But it can be very confusing.  If all you have is a name, you could be stuck.  Knowing the name of the nearest relative back home is very helpful.  If Joe Smith says his wife Jane Doe is back home but you know that your Joe Smith was married to Shirley Jones, then he is the wrong guy.  Even if the age and place of birth looks right.  That is because the pool of names they used seemed to be very limited.  I have lots of documents in what Ancestry calls the 'shoebox'.  They might eventually fit in my tree, I just haven't figured it out yet.  Try as I might, I have yet to figure out how former Detroit Tiger baseball player Reno Bertoia fits in the tree.  I know what side of the family he is on, but that is about it.  Except that his mother was a caterer and my mother worked for her off and on and I sold his sister her wedding dress when I was in college and working in a bridal salon, which is all totally useless.

There are manifest records for Ellis Island, Canadian ports, the Hamburg Line...  If you are looking to discover when and how someone crossed the ocean, it is a good place to start.  And, oftentimes they did not travel alone.  So, there will be other members of their family or neighborhood traveling with them, usually to find work.  

Sometimes, you have someone arrive and disappear.  When my grandfather came from Polish Russia to stay with his cousin in Detroit, he came with the cousin's sister.  Try as I might, I have yet to find any documentation to tell me what happened to her after arrival.  Tis a mystery.

You can go to the Ellis Island site and search the manifests on file.  I tried to search for someone on the Canadian site but they first asked me what ship they were on.  Now how could I possibly know that???

4 comments:

  1. After a while, you begin to wonder if you haven't earned a detective's license for all the detecting involved in finding ancestors. So exciting when things fall into place, though. The ones sailing as singles are the toughest to find.
    https://gail-baugniet.blogspot.com/

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    Replies
    1. It is very rewarding to actually find folks. Maybe the Police Chief could use an amateur detective.

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  2. Oh yes, hand written is horrible to decipher. I found out my grandpa, on my dad’s side, came through New York and ended up I. Chicago. I know he also had a salon there before selling and heading to Canada marrying my grandmom and settling in Barry’s Bay.

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