On ship manifest forms used for immigration to the USA, the passenger was asked to indicate the address of a relative or friend whom they were joining. I will refer to this as the joining address. In the earlier records, it often consisted of just the name of the city or state. By the mid-1890s, the complete street address was usually given. Instead of a street address, sometimes the place of intended employment (e.g., Malleable Iron Co.) was listed. Post office (P. O) boxes were also used. In rural areas (e.g., Fresno County and Tulare County, California), mail delivery and addresses were organized by Route (R. F. D., or Rural Free Delivery), and then by (P. O.) Box. Prior to World War 1, many of the Armenian passengers to North American were men whose intent was to come temporarily for employment and to earn money to send (or take) back to Turkey to better their families' economic conditions. These men (known as sojourners) often lived in boardinghouses with other Armenian men. Some of the joining addresses (such as 98 Common Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts or 86 Douglas Avenue in Providence, Rhode Island) appear again and again.

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

Several options are presented below for customizing this report. By default, the report is created at the State/Province level, sorted in descending order by total count for the row, and the entries whose row count is less than 1% of the grand total count are suppressed (not shown). The scope of the report can be expanded to the Town detail level by checking that box. The suppression filter can also be unchecked to show all rows, the percentage threshold can be increased, and the sort order can be changed (to alphabetical by Country, State/Province, and Town).

Some joining addresses are a neighborhood within a city (e.g., Dorchester within Boston). By default, the neighborhood counts are combined into the city, but the neighborhoods may be shown separately by deselecting that check box. (Note: This option only applies when the Detail by Town box is checked.)

Detail by Town?:  Yes

Sort by Totals?:  Yes (Descending Order)     Suppress Lowest Counts?:  Yes  %

Combine Neighborhood Counts into City?:  Yes