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eLearning Series: Geneology
My Family Tree is Important to Me
( 50 articles in this series )
How
to Locate Family Members
Who Immigrated to America
Centuries ago, the first of hundreds of thousands
of immigrants arrived in America. Over the years, they have
appeared at America’s doorstep for a variety of reasons. In
the early days of the sixteen hundreds, they came with a sense
of exploration and a hope for a better life. That hope carries
over into America’s immigrants even today. As time passed,
people started coming for very different reasons. Many had
farms destroyed in other countries and came to America with
the hope to find new farms. Other came with the hope of getting
an education or to find a better paying job to support their
families. Still others came to get those better jobs so they
could send money back to their home countries. With the world
wars, many immigrants arrived in America to escape the oppression
of horrible government regimes. Whatever the reason,
whatever the time, this culture of immigration has made America
a wonderful
melting pot of cultures. It can, though, make it immensely
difficult to locate family members who immigrated to America
because of the sheer numbers of immigrants that have arrived
over the past three centuries.
By the 1820s, American immigration numbers began to skyrocket
to over ten thousand. Prior to this era, immigration was documented,
but poorly. As a result, it can be a much more difficult task
to track family members who immigrated to America before eighteen
twenty. After that year, immigration officials began to insert
more protocols into the system to ensure immigrants were tracked
appropriately. By eighteen seventy, America was seeing so many
immigrants, more laws were passed to limit the numbers of foreign
born people into the country. As a result, any family members
who came in after that time were more carefully documented,
making it even easier to track them down. By the nineteen twenties,
more quotas were put into place, as were more tracking regulations.
All of these laws have made it easier and easier to find your
family’s immigrants.
When
you get ready to start your search, a date is helpful,
but not necessary. There are several ways you can go about
locating family members who immigrated to America. You can
start by using a paid service. There are a number of these
on the internet. You simply choose a service you like, offer
them all of the information you have, and let them handle the
tracking process for you. This can be a bit costly, but in
the end, it can save you a lot of time and hassle.
If you are interested in handling the research yourself, you
can start by examining passenger manifests to ships that would
have carried immigrants. Again, a date here is helpful, but
not completely necessary. A port of arrival is also helpful.
Without these two things, you are going to spend an extensive
amount of time shooting in the dark for the right passenger
manifest. Some of the services that provide these indexes require
payment. Others provide the service for free. Both the internet
and your local library will be invaluable sources as you begin
your search for passenger lists.
Another important thing you can do in your search to track
your family immigrants is network with others. Try enlisting
the help of other interested family members. Two heads are
always better than one when you are attempting to deal with
this much data. There are also literally hundreds of genealogy
bulletin boards on the internet that you can consult for help.
Simply post a query and wait for others to respond. If you
are uncomfortable posting a query to a website, you can try
posting a query in a genealogy magazine. There are several
reputable publications that can help you track the family members
you need to find.
One final way to attempt to track your family members is to
look at indices that have already been compiled. The LDS family
research center is one of the largest genealogical libraries
in the world with thousands of family trees and extensive information
already compiled. There are also a number of other databases
available on the internet for your searching purposes. Some
require a fee, others are completely free.
Searching can be a difficult process, but finally locating
family members who immigrated to America can be intensely useful
to your family history.
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SolveYourProblem.com
: 2006
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