2003 Meeting & Events Schedule
Plain History Genealogy Group Disks
Internet Sites & Goodies
Mar 8, 2003 Meeting How our Ancestors Got Here and the Paper Trail they Left Behind
May 10, 2003 Meeting

Ahern – Volk Affair In 1890, "something" happened in the streets of Plain. Was it a murder, self-defense or just a case of two guys who couldn’t get along. There are a number of written documents that discuss this case. We will examine these documents to see if we can’t get to the truth. Bring your "facts" to the meeting. This will be an open discussion

As a general rule, meetings will be held at the Kraemer Library & Community Center on the 2^nd Saturday of the month at 9:30 am in "odd" months. An email and newsletter will come out before the meeting. Things can change so check the website and watch your mail.

May 10, 2003 - Jul 19, 2003 note special date - Sep 13, 2003 - Nov 8, 2003

MCGS Workshop Milwaukee, WI Sat Apr 26,2003

Every other year the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society has a day-long workshop. This year's workshop will be held Saturday, April 26, 2003 at Serb Memorial Hall, 5101 West Oklahoma Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. http://www.milwaukeegenealogy.org

I would recommend this seminar to anyone who lives in the Milwaukee area or wants to attend every possible genealogical seminar they can. For most of our members that live in Sauk County, I recommend the seminar in Whitewater on July 12^th.

Pathways to the German Homeland If you miss this annual workshop, you will miss a great workshop. Every year the German Interest Group - Wisconsin has a day-long workshop. This year's workshop is called "Pathways to the German Homeland." It will be held on the UW-Whitewater Campus in Whitewater, WI on Saturday, July 12, 2003. If you are researching German ancestors you don't want to miss this one. (I can't miss this one because the speaker has done fantastic translation and research in Germany for me.) http://rootsweb.com/~wigig/index.html The speaker will be Marion Wolfert. She is an internationally known genealogist and author. She knows lots of stuff.

9:15 am Records that offer clues to an ancestor's place of origin.
10:45 am Types of records found in different regions of Germany.
1:00 pm Border changes affect research.
2:30 pm Every day life from the middle ages to modern times.

Registration before June 28, 2003 if you are a member of GIG is $21.00. The annual membership is $7.50/$10.00 a year and includes a fantastic newsletter. I strongly recommend that you join the group just to get the newsletter. As usual there will be vendor tables to spend money at.

Family History Radio is presenting the "first" e-genealogy conference on the Internet starting June10, 2003. The $69.95 registration includes all the following

The following site gives you more details, including the schedule for the 1st day of this conference. The first day’s sessions look tremendous with nationally known speakers. I especially like that ALL the sessions will be available for 30 days so that I attend them all. These sessions will be a lot like a radio program. I have already signed up.

http://www.familyhistoryradio.com/fhr_sp/shop.php?op=catmain&cat=1

Wis Council for Local History South Central Regional Conference Aug 9, 2003
The Sauk County Historical Society will host this regional conference at UW Baraboo (BOO U)and the Sauk County Historical Museum. More details will be given in the next issue of the Old Sauk Trails, which you get if you are a member of the Sauk County Historical Society. For $10 single or $15 couple, this is a cheap way to keep track of what is going on in the county. http://www.saukcounty.com/schs/join.htm

The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society will be holding their Fall Seminar at the Rain Tree Resort and Conference Center at Wisconsin Dells, WI. There are no details yet, but I will be attending this seminar. http://www.rootsweb.com/~wsgs/meetings.htm

Old World Wisconsin documentary: At the end of April, PBS will premiere a documentary on Old World Wisconsin. This is a "living" museum that lets you step back into the days of our ancestors. A visit to the museum in Eagle, WI should be on your list of things to do. This PBS show will give you an idea of what you will find there. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/sites/oww/

Family History Radio: If you are truly into genealogy, you want to learn all you can. This Internet site gives you a number of ways to learn from your home. In addition to the first E-conference mentioned above, they have a radio program, which covers a variety of topics. Dick Eastman (well known genealogist) also gives a technology update. You can listen to past shows in their archives. They also offer a variety of interesting educational programs. http://www.familyhistoryradio.com/fhr_sp/index.php

123genealogy: Another way to learn more about genealogy is using VHS educational tapes. I have purchased several tapes from this company and am very satisfied with their product. The tapes I have are "The Video Guide to the Salt Lake City Family History Library" "Reading Early American Handwriting" "Using Family Search Internet Genealogy Site" "Cryptic clues in the Bone Yard? http://www.123genealogy.com/

 Free PDF creator: They say there is no such thing as a free lunch. But this comes close. Many people print their stuff in PDF format because this format can be read on almost any computer. The "official" program to create PDF’s costs over $200. This website, http://www.pdf995.com/ , lets you download a "free" version. (For $10 you can get a version that doesn’t popup an ad for the product.) I have used this program for several months and it works very easily. Instead of selecting a "regular printer" you select the PDF995 printer and just print. One real good reason for using PDF files is printing large family trees on one sheet of paper. PDF995 allows you to print to a huge sheet of paper. Using Family Tree Maker or PAF you print your family tree to a PDF file. You put this file on a disk and go to KINKOs. They will print your tree on a sheet up to 36" inches wide and as long as you want. (Yeah I know the old joke. Q: How long do you want it? A: We’ll want it a long time.) They charge about $1.50 a foot to print out on to a continuous sheet of paper. These really look neat.

NEWS.GOOGLE.COM: Not only is Google the best search engine, it is also a great site to get news from. Typing in search terms like "genealogy" or "genealogy wisconsin" can keep you informed of all sorts of things. Like conferences or genealogy meetings coming up. http://news.google.com/

NARA's Archival Databases (AAD) : Using AAD, you can search some of NARA's holdings of electronic records. For further information about all of NARA's electronic records holdings, including those not in AAD, click here. To search descriptions of NARA's non-electronic records, NARA's online catalogue, ARC also is available. AAD gives you: Online access to a selection of nearly 50 million historic electronic records created by more than 20 federal agencies on a wide range of topics; the ability to search for records with the specific information that you seek; important contextual information to help you understand the records better, including code lists, explanatory notes from NARA archivists, and for some series or files in AAD, related documents. AAD supports NARA's. I haven’t been able to get into this site yet. It does look real interesting though.

http://www.archives.gov/aad/index.html

Asking the right question: When you are asking if documents exist, it is important to ask the right question. For example, if you ask when Bavarian civil governments started recording marriages, you will get the answer of around 1875. However, if you ask when Bavarian civil governments started creating marriage-RELATED documents you will get an answer of around 1800. Even though they didn’t record marriages, these local government units required a "book" in order to get permission to marry. I have some marriage documents that are over 40 pages long from around the 1840’s. This permission was needed to become a citizen of a community and required proof that you could support yourself with out "welfare assistance."

http://solo18.abac.com/garylhaas/phgnews/PHG0303.htm Contains sources and an outline of the presentation.

Obviously, learning about the trip can give you names and locations to fill out your family pedigree. For me, family research is not just gathering names and dates. I want to tell the story of my ancestors. (Hopefully somebody will do me this favor in the future.) I will not be attempting to cover "everything" on this topic. I will try to give the basics, what is available, and some of the unique places to look for information.

Leaving family and friends to take a dangerous voyage to the unknown could not have been an easy decision. Here are some of the things that help them make their decision.

• States like Wisconsin had agents in Europe that tried to convince people to settle in the wilderness of Wisconsin. When they could, these agents distributed pamphlets describing the "New World" in glowing terms. I say, "when they could" because the German government wasn’t too keen on loosing potential soldiers. The WHS library in Madison has some of the pamphlets.
• Wisconsin offered a number of legal benefits. In some places in the US, it was necessary to be a US citizen to own land, and you had to live in the US for a "large" number of years before you could vote. Land was being sold for a little more than $1 an acre and you didn’t have to be a citizen. After a year you could vote in Wisconsin. (Even if you weren’t a citizen of the US.)
• The biggest inducement to come was letters sent from America by friends and relatives who had already made the trip. This is sometimes referred to as CHAIN MIGRATION. Like a chain letter, one person makes the trip, writes home, and convinces another to come. This "newly convinced" person then convinces others and so on. Before long the entire German town had emigrated to Wisconsin. (Look at source # 26, which contains 600 pages of these letters home translated into English.)

One of the toughest things for our ancestors was to say goodbye to family and friends. Would you have been willing to leave people close to you, never to see them again? This is why relatives and friends tended to go to the same place. At least they could keep a little piece of their homeland memories alive.

In most cases the immigrant’s entire way of life was going to change. In Europe our ancestors left established communities, churches, and means of transportation. They were leaving this for the boon docks of Wisconsin.

My female ancestors from Germany got the worst part of the deal. In Germany, farmers lived in town and went to their farmland. Farmer’s wives in Germany could meet with one another every day. In America, there were miles between the farms with rough roads to travel. In addition to having to live a rough pioneer life, women lost one of their main methods of socializing. The husband always got to go to town to get something from the hardware store and maybe a quick drink with a friend. Maybe this is why church was a big part of some women’s lives. It might be their only chance to see other people.

One of the nice things about researching German ancestors is that the Germans required a lot of documentation. The best place to look for these documents is www.familysearch.org. The online Family History Library Catalog can point you to a lot of these documents. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has over 100 rolls of microfilm for Waldmuenchen alone. It is well worth the $5 to order the CD version of this online catalog. It has better search features and will find you more items.

Before leaving town, our ancestors had to get "permission." Two main reasons for requiring permission to emigrate were make sure all debts had been paid and make sure military duty obligations were met.

People leaving Germany, usually had to post a notice at the town hall and in the newspaper that they were leaving. In one of the rolls of film I got from the LDS church, I found the 1862 newspaper posting for Michael Blau. Unfortunately, very few of the "permissions to leave" had the newspaper posting.

The actual permissions to leave were written in the old German script that is a bear to work with. You don’t have to be an expert in this German script or even know how to read German to get some benefit from these documents. The first thing to do is figure out what your ancestors’ names and their German hometown’s name looks like in the old script. You don’t have to slog through frames and frames of documents on the microfilm. Usually, these documents will have the person’s name and their town on a title page. Which makes it easier to find documents.

My first use of these films was a classic case of keeping your eyes opened for the unexpected. I was having a dickens of a time reading the old script when I came across a typed list of everybody who had emigrated from Germany to America. This typed list was prepared in 1939 by the German government. My guess is that the Nazis were trying to come up with a list of possible soldiers or even spies for WWII.

Most of these records are in alphabetical order, sort of. The first problem is that certain letters can be substituted for one another in German. For example Bs and Ps are interchangeable. You might have to look for a Pronold under the Bs. If that wasn’t enough, I found my ggg-grandfather Bauer’s document under the Ws. They had prepared one document for several people and filed it under the first name on the list Wutz. If it had not been for the typed list I never would have found it. The "missing" document you are looking for might be hiding on you.

Other records to check for your immigrant ancestors are land records. If your ancestors owned land, they might have gotten rid of it before they left. While some countries might have been a little lax with completing birth and marriage records, most countries were very serious about keeping land records.

Knowing when your ancestors came can also help you tell your ancestors’ story. In general, most people left in Spring, followed by Fall, Summer and winter. Spring was a good time to go if you wanted to get a crop in and a homestead setup in America. Fall was sometimes a choice because it allowed a family to get one last crop in before leaving Germany. A Summer trip had the benefit of good weather on the sea voyage. Winter was the one of the worst times to go. Besides the bad weather on the voyage, where do you live when you get here. One of my ancestors arrived in Wisconsin in January. They ended up spending the winter with a brother who immigrated earlier and had a house already built. If your relatives arrived during winter, they might have stayed with friends or relatives. This gives you something for you to research.

Getting to the port.

In the early days before trains became established, rivers determined the port and the path that our ancestors took. Rotterdam and Antwerp were major ports because they were on the Rhine River. It was easier and safer to travel by boat then by carts or wagon. Once trains became more common the trip to the port was quicker. A quick trip was important because room and board on the trip to the port was expensive and thieves preyed upon emigrants on the trip. Ports like Hamburg and Bremen became major emigration ports.

From an 1880’s shipping company brochure: 1^st class was 3 cents a mile, 2 ½ cents for second class and 1 ½ cents for third class. Express trains traveled about 30 miles an hour. The trip from Munich to Bremen was about 22 hours.

Another source of information about our ancestor’s voyage to America is articles in local newspapers. Local newspapers like to interview old "experienced" members of the community. For example in 1945 "The Weekly Home News" interviewed Joseph Lins. This interview included a lot of details about the trip to the port and life in the old country. If your ancestors were like mine, they didn’t write down their experiences. Because of this, the experiences of others can be used to tell our ancestors’ voyage.

I would look for newspaper articles between the 1920’s and 1950’s. Our ancestors were old enough during this time to be interesting enough to be interviewed. And they were young enough to still be alive and able to talk about their experiences.

Rogues, criminals and thieves targeted emigrants throughout their entire journey. For example, I read a story about several dozen Czech families that wanted to go to Nebraska. Their sleazy agent sold them tickets to New Zealand.

Disease was another problem that our ancestors had to deal with in the ports. In 1892, Russian emigrants brought cholera to the port of Hamburg. Hamburg had inadequate sanitation systems. During six weeks in November and December, nearly 10,000 people died in Hamburg. Bremen had a better sewage system and only 6 people died.

The port of Bremen is on the Wesser River many miles from the ocean. The Wesser River, started getting blocked by silt which prevented ships leaving from Bremen. The port of Bremenhaven was "purchased" / "established" by the port of Bremen. Many emigrants left through Bremenhaven even though records might have said Bremen.

Many ships from German ports did not go directly to America. Many ships made a stop in England (Southhampton, Liverpool) for additional passengers and mail.

There were lots of records made about our ancestors in the German ports before they left. Unfortunately, many of these records no longer exist. The goofs in Bremen decided in the late 1800’s that they only needed to keep the last two-year’s of records. And they destroyed the rest. In the early 1900’s they saw the error of their ways and started keeping all the records again. But then the world wars came along and most of the records were destroyed anyway. Too bad, most of our ancestors came through this port.

The records of the port of Hamburg did survive. You can search their records for ancestors that might of gone through this port. There is a charge for detail information if you find a match.

http://www.hamburg.de/fhh/behoerden/staatsarchiv/link_to_your_roots/english/index.htm

There are still some secondary records available at the various ports. It seems like Germans couldn’t turn around without registering at the local police station for any variety of reasons. Some of these records still exist.

The following are the dates of key advances in ships:
1833 sail to wooden paddle (speed)
1843 wood to iron hulls (strength)
1850 paddle to screw (economy)
1856 simple to compound engine (efficiency)
1879 iron to steel hulls (cost)
1889 single to twin screws (safety)

I am going to discuss the details of a voyage on steamships. The voyage on a steamship in the last part of the 1800’s and early 1900’s were not pleasure ships like the "Love Boat." Nobody turned down your bed at night and put a piece of chocolate mint on your pillow. A lot of the same god-awful conditions on steamships existed on sail ships. Except the conditions were much worse. The lousy conditions and the longer voyages (several months) common on sail ships made them death traps.

The voyage on a steamship could take between 10 to 20 days. In reading about these ships I was surprised to learn that they had a butcher’s shop, ice and meat house, and a vegetable storehouse. They also had animals including horses, cows and chickens. They also had other animals including rats and lice.

Lighting was provided through skylights and oil lamps that were put out at night to avoid fire. And you weren’t issued a night-light if you were afraid of the dark.

Stormy weather was not a pleasant thing to experience. If the ship was going through bad weather, the hatches were closed and the passengers were kept in the steerage area in the dark without fresh air.

Violent motions rearranged anything that wasn’t tied down in steerage. To be indelicate, there was also a lot of puking going on. Considering that keeping steerage clean was not always a high priority, the ship had quite an aroma thanks to Neptune’s revenge.

The passengers were not one big happy family. If you didn’t watch your stuff, it would be stolen.

As though this wasn’t enough, it was not uncommon for the crew to be abusive. These normally ignorant, sometimes drunken seamen would try to force themselves on the single and unprotected women. Passengers would form their own protection groups with watchman to try to prevent abuses and theft.

Sleeping arrangements were another issue on the boats. From my reading, sleeping berths were assigned. There was a berth number on your ticket. It was not a first-come-first-served process. Otherwise the bigger passengers would end up with the good berths next to the air-providing hatches and stairs.

Another big question was where do the married men sleep? Steerage was a lot of open space. You obviously want to have the single men sleep separate from the single and the married women. Do you let the husbands sleep with their wives or make them sleep with the single men? The actual method used varied from ship to ship.

If the married men stayed with their wives, there was not much a proper and modest woman could do. This sleeping arrangement could lead to infrequent bathing, if any by the women. The closeness of the berths meant for all intents, a woman was not only sleeping with her husband but also the husband of the bunkmates on either side.

Regarding the passengers’ "kits", sometimes the shipping lines provided it and sometimes not. An example of a standard "kit" included one blanket, one sack of straw for a bed, knife, fork, spoon and two pails. Two pails? One was for water. The other one was for? Hmmm, I will let you figure out what the second one was used for.

In some cases, emigrants would dump their kits into the river when they arrived in New York. This negated the on ship health reviews. Before the health officials could check passengers for contagious diseases, the germ-infected bedding was washing up on the New Jersey shore.

A first class restaurant did not prepare the food on the ships. Most of the food was meant to be filling not delicious or nutritious.

Most of our ancestors came across in third class or steerage. Some families would come across in 2^nd class as a way to dodge the health inspections upon arrival in America. If a steerage passenger weren’t healthy, they would be sent back to Europe. However second class passengers only got a quick health check.

Once you find the ship that your ancestor traveled on, you can find a great deal of information. It is highly likely that you can find a picture on the Internet. Lloyds of London kept records of most ships. You can find detailed descriptions about the ships including, physical dimensions, type of engine, who built it, and modification.

I got lucky and found an 1880’s marketing brochure by the North German Lloyd ship line. Which happens to be the line my ancestors traveled on. It had a very detailed description of the ocean voyage in first class. There was also an excellent cross-section view of the very ship one of my ancestors came to America on. You never know where you will find stuff. I found this at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

There were a number of ports that emigrants could land at in America. The main ones were Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans and of course the most-used, New York City. The following summarizes were emigrants "landed" in New York City.

There wasn’t a brass band waiting to welcome the emigrants. Emigrants from earlier years that had established themselves in America did not want the "new" emigrants to despoil America. And like everywhere else, criminals preyed upon emigrants as soon as they set foot in America. These criminals were called runners. They would use any ploy to separate an emigrant from his baggage and money. The "kinder / gentler" runners would just try to get an emigrant to stay at a hotel that he represented. The nasty ones would take the baggage and run.

There were some organizations that looked out for the emigrant. Many of these were groups that tried to help a specific ethnic group. The Germans had the German Society of New York, which was established in 1784. These organizations provided all sorts of assistance including money, advice and a means to keep in contact with friends and relatives.

This was the worst time for emigrants. They were just dropped off at the docks and left to go on their own way. Unfortunately, runners had a feeding frenzy on the unwary. There also was no- filtering process to make sure that people with diseases weren’t landing in America.

After years of having to deal with poor emigrants and the risks of diseases, Castle Garden was set up as the best port for emigrants to land in America.

The setting up of Castle Garden as a processing station was not a popular idea. They converted prime park / entertainment land on the southwest side of Manhattan Island into a site overrun by "smelly, disease ridden immigrants." Castle Garden was once an entertainment spot for the wealthy people of New York. A large fence was placed around Castle Garden. One reason was to keep the emigrants out of lower Manhattan.

The walling off of Castle Garden made the lives of emigrants much easier. The runners and other thieves couldn’t get at the emigrants any more. Our ancestors going through Castle Garden could be processed, get messages from relatives/friends, exchange their foreign money, get directions and tickets to their final location, wash up, get something to eat, get a job, and spend the night until their train left from the stations in New Jersey.

The Barge Office was an idea that never worked. It was meant to process 1^st and 2^nd class passengers. It was used as a substitute-processing site when Castle Garden and Ellis Island sites were completely burned down. One of the main drawbacks is that there wasn’t a "fence" to get the runners out. This exposed emigrants to the attacks of runners again.

Q: Who is Annie Moore?
A: She was a 15-year old Irish girl and the first person processed at Ellis Island.

Q: What are the island’s names.
A: It got Ellis from Samuel Ellis, the owner during the late 1700’s. It was also called, Kioshk, Gull,
Oyster, Dyre, Bucking and Anderson’s (name after a murdered executed on the island).

Q: Ellis Island isn’t all American.
A: Ellis Island started as a 3.3 acres. It was then almost tripled in size by landfill. Some of this landfill
came from the rocks used as ballast by the ships our emigrants came on. (If the ships didn’t take on
weight before the journey, they would bounce around like a cork.)

I have plagiarized the following from Novotny’s book "Strangers at the Door, Ellis Island, Castle Garden, and the Great Migration to America." This is a tremendous book that describes processing in great detail. The following is an example of how this process might have worked in 1907.

• Once America was sighted, there was a frenzy in steerage as passengers got ready to be processed. Luggage and money was checked and arranged and more importantly, people cleaned themselves up. They threw away the clothes they on the trip. These had quite an interesting smell. They put on their best clothes so they could make their best impression upon the health inspectors.
• Ships would anchor in New York harbor and health inspectors would come on board to make a
  quick check. People in first and second class were asked a few questions which took care of their

processing.

• The ship would dock at a pier on the Hudson River (also called the North River) on the west side of
  Manhattan Island. First and second class passengers were sent on their way. While third class passengers were loaded into a shed on Manhattan Island. They waited here for ferry boats to take them to Ellis Island.
• The immigrants received a tag with a large number on it. The number was the same as the number
  of the manifest they were recorded on. There was a smaller number on the tag, which had the line the person was on. People were kept together in groups based on these tags. This made it easy for people to be processed at Ellis Island.

- Officials at Ellis Island would yell and rush / push the immigrants along. They did this because these
officials were obnoxious and it was an unofficial part of the health inspection.

• Now the fun started. At the Ellis Island main building, immigrants had to climb a steep stairs to the
  second floor where the actual processing was done. Some people thought this was a poor design. But
  it did help the health inspectors who only had minutes to identify people who were sick or infirm.
  Climbing the stairs was the first "unofficial" health test.
• Upstairs the immigrant got a quick looking-over. An interpreter would ask short questions to make sure that the person didn’t have some mental defect. If a disease was found, a letter was written on the immigrant’s clothes and sent the person on for a more detailed examination.
• The eye examine was the nastiest. The inspectors were looking for trachoma, which caused blindness. The inspectors looked at the linings of the eyelid by using a button-hook for women’s gloves to turn up the eye lid. This makes me flinch just writing about it.
• After passing the health inspection, the immigrant went to final processing. At this stage, the immigrant was matched up by his tag to the manifest lists prepared by the shipping company. It is at this stage the infamous name-changing myth supposedly occurred. There were interpreters familiar with these foreign names to help in the matching process. So names weren’t being changed will-nilly without the immigrant’s permission.
• If the immigrant passed this stage, they were ready to continue their journey. They could send / receive messages, exchange money and make travel arrangements. They could also get one of the famous Ellis Island box lunches packed in huge boxes. (The Library of Congress has some excellent movies from around the turn of the century where you can see these huge boxes.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html Click on "List the Film Titles". )

 The press of the time had some interesting views on the various ethnic groups:

- The Irish are excited, sanguine, merry and belligerent on the smallest provocation; indeed the atmosphere of the Republic seems to generate bellicose qualities. Our Hibernian brothers are the only people under the sun who fight for the pure love of the thing, and who seem to like a man the better after a few knock-downs, either given or received.

- The German is staid, quiet, and sober, when he lands and remains so to the end. He is fond of company, capable of great self-enjoyment; but he is moderate in his pleasures, and thrifty to the last degree. He doesn’t make much money, but he rarely spends it and grows wealthy after a while by a rigid economy.

The Teuton you detect at once by his long-skirted, dark blue woolen coat, high-necked and brass-buttoned vest, and fiat military cap, or gray beaver. Indeed, one of the officers told me that he could tell exactly what part of Germany each individual came from by his dress alone, and I believe he could.

There are a number of documents that can be used to follow our ancestors’ journeys. A neat one is the shipping news sections of the major papers in the ports. These sections reported all arrivals including some great information about the actual voyage. The New York Times is a great source for tracking arrivals. This paper is available at the WHS Library in Madison and at Ancestry.com for a medium-sized fee.

Castle Garden and Ellis Island kept their own administrative records. Unfortunately these were destroyed in fires at these two sites. It might have been nice to see what neat stuff they had.

Well the good news is that most, but not all of the passengers’ lists have survived. The WHS Library in Madison has microfilm copies of many of these lists. These lists tell you all sort of good things. The information on these lists varied from year to year.

Prior-to Ellis Island, these lists showed things like: passenger names, the captain, and number of pieces of luggage.

If your ancestors went through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924, you are lucky. The members of the LDS church have built an online index to these shipping lists. You can search by a passenger’s name, the port they left or even the European town that they came from. Once you find your emigrant, you can look at a picture/description of the ship and the passenger manifests. These manifests contain some excellent pieces of information. Manifests in 1923 included answers to the following questions:

1. number on the list
2. head-tax status
3. name in full (family name, given name)
4. age (year, months)
5. sex
6. married or single
7. calling or occupation
8. able to read, read what language, write
9. nationality
10. race or people
11. last permanent residence (country, town)
12. name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came
13. final destination (state, city or town)
14. number on the list
15. whether having a ticket to final destination
16. by whom passage was paid
17. whether in possession of $50 and if less, how much
18. in United States before
19. name and address of relative or friend immigrant going to join
20. purpose of coming to United States
21. ever in prison, almshouse, or institution for care and treatment of the insane or supported by charity
22. polygamist
23. anarchist
24. whether by coming by reason of any offer, solicitation, promise expressed or implied of labor in US
25. previously deported within one year
26. condition of health – mental and physical
27. deformed or crippled, nature, length of time and cause
28. height (feet, inches)
29. complexion
30. color of hair, eyes
31. marks of identification
32. place of birth ( country, city or town)

If you answered yes to question #24, you were automatically sent back to Europe. In the old days, people in America would pay the passage for emigrants who couldn’t afford it. The emigrants would then served several years of indentured servitude. This was a big no-no at Ellis Island.

You have to be sure to check out question #18. In Europe, it was common for people to travel to other countries for seasonal work then return home. Maybe your ancestor will show up several times on the Ellis Island lists because they traveled to America for seasonal work.

Be sure to look for handwritten notes on the manifest. They could contain all sorts of information about your ancestor.

Instead of using the official Ellis Island website, I recommend that you use the site by Steve Morse.

Ellis Island Records Search Forms http://www.stevemorse.org/ http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/faq.htm

I could write another book on how to use this site but I have already killed a tree with this newsletter. READ THE FAQ.htm to find out how to use the site. Some things to be familiar with:

1. white form – searching for an individual passenger (lots of selection criteria)
2. gray form – lets you search by town (if the town name was spelled write ;-} )
3. select seeing the search results in NEW FORMAT
4. you have to sign in / register to use the Ellis Island site
5. Finding Missing Manifest in One Step (this entry way allows you to right-click and save and image of the manifest to your PC)

Whew. That was a lot of writing. I couldn’t put in all the details. By following the source list on the meeting’s handout, you read some nifty stories about what our ancestors went through. Maybe, I will write about some these stories in future newsletters.

Ahern – Volk Affair What really happened?
Where did this take place?
The people involved.
The fight in the bar.
The duel.
Newspaper Coverage.
The trial.
August Derleth’s version. It makes a good story. But what is fact what is fiction.

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