SUMMARY OF SOME
IN U. S. CUSTOMS
PASSENGER SHIP RECORDS
By David Dreyer of San Mateo, California
Click here for the North Dakota Listings
U. S. Passenger ship records constitute a major resource on determining the
village of origin for immigrants to America. During the decade around the turn of the
century the U. S.
passenger ship manifests underwent a number of changes. In 1893 enforcement of
immigration regulations and responsibility for maintaining ship passenger
manifests was transferred from Customs to a Superintendent of Immigration. The amount of data recorded on the ship lists
was increased in 1897, in 1903 and again in 1906. In 1906 the Bureau of Immigration and
Naturalization was created and the ships lists after this date record not only
the last residence but also the place of birth.
lists were compiled by the shipping company at the port of departure. The manifests were then used by the U. S.
immigration inspectors as a basis for their examination. The U. S. inspectors then reexamined
the immigrants checking their responses against the data on the manifest. The passenger ship lists are all available on
microfilm either from the National Archives or the FHL in Salt Lake. These lists are indexed except for the port of New York 1849-1896.
major flow of Banat immigration to America occurred in the period 1900
until the first World War although migration to ND preceded this period a few
years. Up until 1904 Banat immigration
occurred mostly from the North Sea German ports of Bremen
and Hamburg with fewer numbers leaving from Antwerp and Rotterdam. Ships leaving from Bremen
were exclusively Nord Deutscher Lloyd (NDL) while
those from Hamburg
were Hamburg American Line. The NDL ships landed in either New
York or Baltimore.
Hamburg American Line, Holland-American (from Rotterdam)
and Red Star Line (from Antwerp) ships
disembarked passengers almost exclusively in New York.
measures to capture some of the immigrant departure business the Hungarian
government took measures to encourage its citizens to use the Adriatic port of Fiume as a port of departure. In 1904, following an agreement by which the
Hungarian goverment gave Cunard an exclusive
concession for the shipping of immigrants from Fiume, many Banaters
came to America
by this route. These Cunard ships
disembarked exclusively at the port
of New York. For Banaters,
departure from Fiume required the possesion of a
Hungarian passport while at this same time the North Sea ports, as well as Antwerp and Le
Havre, did not require a passport or other travel
documents. Immigration from the Banat to
occurred in three main waves (mini Schwabenzugs?)
centered around the years 1892-1893, 1897-1898 and 1903. From the
naturalization data it appears that about half of ND Banaters
departed from the port
of Bremen. The Baltimore records were systematically searched for ND Banaters for the period 1892-1912 and New York records for the years 1903, 1905,
1906 and 1907. Banaters
whose destination was given to localities in Montana are also included in this database.
Donau Schwabens were usually detectable in the
records because by nationality they were Hungarian but ethnically German. They traveled with Hungarian travel
documents. The fact that many Banat emigrants traveled in groups, especially in the
early period, aided in their identification in the records. Nevertheless, the
usual problems of illegible handwriting, faded records as well as the failure
to indicate North Dakota
as the destination certainly led to many entries being overlooked. After residence for several years in St Louis, Chicago, etc.,
they moved on to North Dakota. Unless one is looking for a specific
individual these immigrants are difficult to detect in the passenger ship
typical passenger list after 1906 contained among other facts, the individuals
name, age, sex, marriage status, occupation, race, last permanent address, name
and address of nearest relative in country from which they came, final
destination, in possession of a ticket to the destination and by who paid,
whether in possession of $50 and, if less, how much, name and address of who
they were going to join, and place of birth. The spelling of a few surnames
from these ship lists has been slightly altered to make them consistent with
that of the same individuals in the other ND databases and make them consistent
with the presently accepted spelling.
Supplemental data on the principals in some entries is given in
brackets. Most of this annotated
material comes from family books for the village of origin (See references).