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Passenger Manifests to USa prior to 1879
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25-03-2016 10:49pm#1
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Ancestry has the most complete collection of US immigrant records, in my experience. And the largest port by far was New York, no matter where the immigrants ended up.
Perhaps Ancestry has the biggest collection of immigration records, but I’m not so sure that NYC can hold undisputed first place as an arrival port. This is a frequent claim and nobody (genealogist or historian) has yet given me a satisfactory answer with a source. That aside, the key to searching is the date (period) of departure. Huge numbers crossed the Atlantic and landed at Quebec/Grosse Ile but due to the lack of Canadian records they are uncounted.
There were several reasons why passengers went to ports other than NYC at different dates. They went to northern ports because ships then, as ships and planes now, follow the ‘Great Circle’ route. That route is shorter, so it isfaster, so less ship time so less wages for crew and less food consumed. Because of this ticket prices were cheaper, hence the attraction to the poor Irish.
Additionally, before Britain revised its Passenger Acts (in the 1850’s, as a result of what had happened during the Famine), emigration on a US ship was more expensive due to fewer passenger numbers allowed – reduced carrying capacity was forced on US ship-owners by the more stringent US Passenger Acts. (Hence the stories of ‘coffin ships’ arriving in Canada during the 1840's.)
The transatlantic distance to NYC is greater than to Boston or Quebec and during the mid-late 1800's higher admission charges for immigrants prevailed in the Atlantic states than in ‘British North America’ (Canada). Many Irish migrants avoided these ‘difficulties’ and the higher prices by landing in Canada and walking over the border into the US, or having cleared immigration at Grosse Ile took steamers from the Upper St. Lawrence to Montreal, often taking other vessels to travel further into the Great Lakes. Some walked - and many paid the price of Canadian and Mid-West winters. A good example of a family taking the St. Lawrence / Great Lake route is Henry Ford’s grandfather’s family, who travelled from Co. Cork via Canada to Dearborne, Michigan.
Between 3 - 6,000 Irish died of fever at Grosse Ile in the few months overlapping 1847/8, so with a mortality rate of 5% that represents about 100,000 passengers in that period alone.
Other destinations (apart from Boston, New Haven, Rhode Island, NYC, Baltimore, etc) include Savannah, which many often overlook, and people also forget that in 1850, twenty per cent of New Orleans residents were Irish, a city having at that time a higher per capita percentage of Irish than Philadelphia and Baltimore, and it placing it on an equal footing with Boston for denizens from Ireland.
Bottom line is don't get fixated on NYC.
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Thanks VB. I don’t want to get into a long debate on this, but your response underscores my point. I never have received a reasoned response to assertions that NYC was the hub. For starters, I never said that NYC was not a main port of entry, what I question is that it was the biggest. Great records are available for NY, which skews opinion, but too many people ignore other arrival ports. Actually contrary to what you say, today NY is in third position (actually we’re talking NJ i.e. Port Elizabeth not NY) and it’s far behind New Orleans / Baton Rouge and Houston. As for the 1700's, when NYC had just a few piers, South St Seaport area, Boston had the Long Wharf by 1720 - go look at Paul Revere's engraving of it, half a mile long.The evidence for New York as the major port in the Western hemisphere in the 19c is so lengthy and overwhelming that it's trying to prove 1 + 1 = 2. And I am sorry but I don't have time--nor is there space--to write it all up. NY is still the major port on the Atlantic
See above. NY was just one of the many entry points. For example, according to the book "The Irish in New Orleans 1800-1860" by Earl F. Niehaus, New Orleans was a major port of entry for Irish emigrants. "Cotton was King" and New Orleans was the leading port to export it. The ships that took cotton to Liverpool, brought passengers back to New Orleans as ballast. Thus the rates were cheaper. After 1834, these cotton ships were responsible for over 80% of the Irish emigrants. (See Ancestry)NY was and is a transportation hub for the interior of the continent. The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, connected with the Great Lakes and the interior of the US.
The Erie Canal is a red herring – it did open in the 1820’s, but itstarts from Albany, about 150 miles upriver from NYC,or about half the distance to say Buffalo from NYC, so what is the point of going up there? The immigrants did not sail up, the Hudson was navigable for steam but not sail and in the Famine era sail predominated. ( It also was a long trip by river, get as far as West Point on a tide, wait for six hours, etc.) Also, in the 1800’s the canal was mainly freight, slow, with horse-drawn barges and the price of passenger tickets was far beyond the reach of most Irish peasants.
That is just plain wrong – the packet ship system existed in the 1600’s, long before the US existed. Dutch East India Company, or mails to Ireland from London, are just two examples.The US developed the packet ship system--ships leaving at an announced day and time. This was hugely popular with immigrants. Liverpool to NY packet ships were the way to go for decades.
I never suggested that the Irish remained in Canada, I said they travelled there and went south, like the Fords. It was considerably cheaper – The cheapest fares were to Canada, around 55 shillings, (£2.15.0) while a fare to the USA cost between 70 - 100 shillings (£3.10.0 and £5.0.0) to NYC Not a lot, but as a peasant labourer the difference represented several months work in Ireland. That mattered.Even today Canada has a population of about 35 million compared to the NYC metropolitan area of 20 million
Jobs? The Irish had no skills and a large number were monoglot Irish. The absence of skills was the difference with immigrants such as the Jewish diaspora from Central Europe – they had some capital, skills such as tailoring or casual trading, (hence their continued presence in the garment industry) so it was basic labouring for the ordinary Irish. Also, emigration in large numbers had tapered off before the Homestead Act. Pre-Famine immigration ran at about 50k per year but in the decade 1845 to 1855 it was treble that annual figure, peaking in 1846 when 250k left. By 1855 numbers had dropped to about 70k per year. Furthermore, tenancy was not “enforced” – there was some social mobility if capital became available.Jobs. NY had many jobs for immigrants at various skill levels. For those who wanted to farm, there was a lot of almost-free land further west after the Homestead Act of 1862. Just imagine what that meant to the land-starved Irish after centuries of enforced tenancy.
That’s another red herring – the average Irish peasant had no notion of ‘nationalism’ up to the Fenians, nor did they particularly want to remain in Canada, they just wanted a cheap ticket and a route to the US.Freedom. In Canada, the Irish were still British subjects, especially undesirable for the Irish in particular. Naturalization was very, very easy before 1906, appealing to those of every nationality.
I know – Canada is cold, but is it any different to the Mid-West? Ever been to South Bend in winter – or even March!? People wanted to come to the US, Canada was a ‘route’, not a destination.Climate. It's cold in Canada. Look at the population figures even today. People wanted to come to the US and they did so in their largest numbers by far through New York.
To reiterate my point - New York is not the be-all and end-all of immigration ports; a proper researcher need to cast a wide net and look beyond nicely recorded entries on Ancestry; s/he needs to understand the motivation of the emigrant, the hardships of the travel, the long walks and the tribulations of what was encountered en route. That's all 0 -
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Castle Garden was actually at the southern tip of Manhattan, in an area now known as Battery Park.
I do not think Speed, Rocque or De Gomme ever got there.
Indeed. Tallis is yer man, John the cartographer, not Tom the musician– see here for Castlegarden at the Battery. Originally it was an island but was later joined to Lower Manhattan by in-fill to become part of Battery Park.
I had and have no wish to be divisive on this topic and in fairness to VB’s point on numbers, there is absolutely no doubt that a huge number came through NYC, which is why in 1855 Castlegarden was built - then in the later 1800’s when steam power was more common the numbers there and later in Ellis increased dramatically, to accommodate growing numbers of Germans and Italians. The topic of landing numbers, people and ports is a minefield, which is why I queried it.
Many factors influenced what happened -much depends on date of sailing - not just year but also season, the country / port of departure, the type of ship used (steam/sail), the political situation in the host country (e.g. the repeal of property qualifications in the US for voting rights, Whigs or Democrats in power) and the number and level of enforcement of the various shipping and other Acts in the countries involved – the main British Navigation Act was revoked in 1849 which made it possible to carry on the return voyage previously forbidden cargoes, just as later passenger Acts made the carriage of passengers more ‘onerous’ for the ships of specific national registry. If a shipping line had the contract to carry the “Mails” it had a Ryanair-type ‘bums on berths’ policy to cross-subsidize costs. Thinking laterally, and taking Norway as a (neutral) example, prior to 1850 most Norwegian ships going to North America sailed to New York. Then, from 1850 to about 1854 almost all sailed to Quebec. In 1855, only one Norwegian ship sailed to New York. Look at this barchart
The poorest Irish in the biggest ‘waves’ landed in Canada (Quebec) because it was the cheapest route. The big issue for researchers is records, as pointed out by Pinky – Canada did not begin to collate passenger lists for the port of Quebec until 1865. Other Canadian ports began archiving even later - Halifax, Nova Scotia - 1881 and Saint John, New Brunswick - 1900. There are no surviving official records prior to these dates. This means that for the great majority of the Irish emigrants, particularly Famine ones (including the Ford family) there are no existing passenger lists so no primary source material.
As has been said, cast a wide net.0
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