Armenian communities in different parts of America have their own unique demographic makeups in terms of birth place of the immigrants. This report shows the birth places (as stated on the ship manifest), for all Armenian immigrants destined for a particular state/province, or for a town or city (the "joining address"). (Since the place of birth didn't become a standard part of the ship manifest until 1907, the scope of this report includes immigrants starting in that year.)

The Ship Manifests database table currently represents some of the estimated 100,000 to 125,000 arrivals of Armenians to seaports in North America through 1930. Most of the abstracts are from ship manifests to New York (Castle Garden before 1892, Ellis Island in 1892 and later). Other important seaports for arriving passengers include Providence, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco in the USA, and Halifax, Quebec, and St. John (New Brunswick) in Canada. Passengers also arrived at a number of smaller seaports. Armenians boarded ships from seaports on the Atlantic Ocean in western Europe, from the Mediterranean Sea, from American seaports in Cuba and Argentina, and Pacific seaports in Japan and China. Some even left from seaports on the Black Sea, Arctic Ocean, and Baltic Sea. Most of my early research consisted of a systematic abstraction of ship manifests for steamships traveling from French ports on the Atlantic Ocean (Le Havre, Cherbourg, Boulogne, and Bordeaux) to New York, between 1892 and 1914. That was followed by a focus on steamships bringing Armenian refugees to America after the end of WW1, primarily in the period between 1920 and 1924. Over 4,000 "ship trips" have been searched so far. (A ship trip is a voyage between a source port and a destination port. Many steamships gathered passengers from multiple source ports on the same voyage.) As I research Armenians in other primary sources (like military draft registrations, censuses, and naturalization records), I try to find those same individuals on one or more ship manifests. When I research a ship manifest, I abstract all Armenians on that particular ship trip. Thousands of more voyages remained to be researched.

I have also started adding entries from border crossing documents from Mexico and Canada to the USA into this table. These are especially important for those Armenians who came to the USA through Mexico, since ship manifests into Mexico from overseas are not available (as they are for Canada). You can distinguish a border crossing from a ship arrival by the absence of the ship name.

To see what ship trips have been searched for inclusion into this database table, select the following link: Ship Manifests Scope

The birth places for a particular joining address are shown at the level of the birth state or province (in the USA or Canada), or vilayet (in the case of the Ottoman Empire). For other birth places, only the country is shown. Ottoman kazas and towns are rolled up into the vilayet in which they are located (Keghi within Erzurum, Harput within Mamuretulaziz, Evereg within Ankara, Mush within Bitlis, etc.).

Some joining addresses are a neighborhood within a city (e.g., Dorchester within Boston). If the city name is selected, the results will include all neighborhoods within that city. Alternately, the neighborhood itself may be selected (e.g., Boston (Dorchester)), restricting results to just that neighborhood.

Joining Country:                    BrazilCanadaCubaMexicoUSA

Joining State/Province:             all?ALARCACOCTDCDEFLGAHIIAILINKSKYLAMAMDMEMIMNMOMTNCNDNENHNJNSNVNYNY [?]OHOKORPARISDTNTXUTVAVTWAWIWVWY

Joining Town:                       allAnaheimBakersfieldBelvedere [E. Los Angeles]BerkeleyBig CreekCaruthersChicoChula VistaClovisColtonCrescent CityCutlerDel ReyDinubaDowneyFowlerFresnoGlendaleHanfordHollywoodHuntington ParkKermanKingsburgLancasterLindsayLong BeachLos AngelesMaderaMontebelloNapaOaklandOrosiParlierPasadenaPetalumaReedleyRiversideSacramentoSalidaSan DiegoSan FranciscoSan JoseSan PedroSangerSanta Monica (Ocean Park)SausalitoSelmaSt. HelenaStocktonTulareTurlockVan NuysVisaliaYettem