Emigration

NORTH AMERICA, GENERAL.
U.S. Sources to Identify Irish Place of Origin
Published Works on Emigration
Scotch-Irish in North America


Localities in North America.

Scotch-Irish in North America

Australia & New Zealand.

France.

South Africa, Argentina & West Indies.

Passenger & emigrant lists.

Browse Sections

THE RECORDS

COUNTIES

EMIGRATION

ADDRESSES

HOW TO

LINKS

ARTICLES
The United States and Canada

Where ships' passenger lists were kept, most appear to have been deposited at the port of arrival, rather than departure; in general, the authorities were more concerned with recording those entering a country than those leaving. The most comprehensive records for the U.S., therefore, are the Customs Passenger Lists, dating from 1820, and the Immigration Passenger Lists, from 1883, both in the National Archives in Washington. Unfortunately, the earlier lists are not very informative, giving only the country of origin of the emigrant.

They have been collected by the U.S. National Archives for the most important immigrant ports, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, as well as Mobile, New Bedford, and New Orleans. Microfilm copies of the lists for New York and Boston are available at the National Library of Ireland. A full reference is given in the lists accompanying this section. No index to these is available, making them very difficult to use if a relatively precise date of arrival is not known.

As well as these, however, there are many less comprehensive lists, published and unpublished, which record intending and actual emigrants and ships' passengers to North America. A number of attempts have been made to systematize access to these. The most important are the Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (3 Vols). Ed. William Filby & Mary K. Meyer. Gale, Detroit, 1981. (NL: RR 387 p 7), a consolidated index to a wide variety of lists relating to North American immigration from all over the world, and The Famine Immigrants, (7 Vols; indexed) Baltimore; The Genealogical Publishing Company, 1988 (National Library Ir. 942 g 12), which records more than half a million Irish arrivals in New York between 1846 and 1851. Even these, however, cover only a fraction of the material of potential value. The listings elsewhere in this section organize the available materials chronologically, to allow easy reference. On-line transcripts of passenger lists are referenced in our links section.