Tracing Immigrants

If you know where your family came from, you probably will not need to locate a record of immigration to a new country. You can skip that step and look for them in their homeland. But for most people, a crucial clue to family origins can be found in records originally created to record the ethnic and health background of potential new citizens. Fortunately, while a visit to Ellis Island (and the Statue of Liberty) may be interesting and meaningful (more genealogy tourism ideas!), you don't actually have to go any farther than your computer screen to track down ancestors. Some examples of sites that can assist you include:

Australia

State Records NSW

Public Record Office Victoria

Canada

Library and Archives Canada

United States

Ancestry.ca

CastleGarden.org

Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation

Each of these web resources provides a different type and scope of information but if you are lucky, you could find the name of the town where your ancestors lived. Review all available pages that come up in the searches: there is a chance that a second scanned document contains additional information about the person. One example of this is an additional page that identifies the name of a relative - sometimes in the "old world" but also (possibly) the person's contact in the new country. Be cautious of accepting spellings of towns or cities - and surnames. Remember, someone had to listen to the words of your relative and copy down what they heard even when they might not have understood the language of the immigrant. Spellings where thus inadvertantly changed on the spot - and the true identity of a home of origin could also be significantly changed. Still, you might get closer than you ever did in the corner of the world where you live - so don't give up easily. Happy hunting!