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Search Ship Manifests - By Destination Date
This query allows you to search for entries in the Ship Manifests database by date of arrival in North America (Destination Date). Select a year and (optionally) a standardized last name. If a last name is selected, any entries in that calendar year with that last name mentioned are included in the list. (Starting in 1907, each ship manifest entry included the names of up to three different people - the passenger (Passenger Name), the "nearest friend or relative in country whence alien came" (Leaving Name), and the name in the field labeled "whether going to join a relative or friend" (Joining Name). The Joining Name was included on earlier manifests.) This query is important because Armenian passengers often traveled together with family members or friends, and it lets you see who else was on their ship.
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
= Click on icon to view abstract of entry (
includes link(s) to additional records)| Action | Ship Class | List | # | Passenger Name | Age | Sex | Birth Place | Last Residence | Joining Location | Immigrant ID(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1885-08-27 (Hamburg to New York) - Frisia | ||||||||||
| Steerage | 366 | Bugdamian [Bagdanian], Baizar | 19 | F | / | FRIS-27AUG1885-3--0366 | |||
| Steerage | 367 | Samelian [Samuelian], Prapian | 16 | F | / | FRIS-27AUG1885-3--0367 | |||
| Steerage | 368 | Bugdamian [Bagdanian], Demul | 14 | M | / | FRIS-27AUG1885-3--0368 | |||
| 1885-10-17 (Palermo to New York) - Letimbro | ||||||||||
| Steerage | 1 | Cashzian [Tashjian], T. | 22 | M | / USA | LETI-17OCT1885-3--0001 | |||
| Steerage | 2 | Daghlian, H. | 45 | M | / USA | LETI-17OCT1885-3--0002 | |||
| Steerage | 3 | Barakian [Parigian], A. (Mrs.) | 30 | F | / USA | LETI-17OCT1885-3--0003 | |||
| Steerage | 4 | Barakian [Parigian], Arniv | 8 | F | / USA | LETI-17OCT1885-3--0004 | |||