LESSON NINE
Nineteenth Century Research Methods

READING ASSIGNMENT: Click here for Chapter 9

Family Clusters

After reading Chapter 9 be aware that since the customs lists seldom name the specific town of birth or previous residence, their use in determining an immigrant's origin is limited. However, it is very useful to try and locate the actual arrival lists for your immigrants. As noted above, the name, and age of every immigrant appears on the lists. Often, in the course of our immigrant origins research, we do not learn all of this information. We may learn about one immigrant, and perhaps his or her father. However, often entire families immigrated.

As outlined in earlier lessons, it is vital to know about all the immigrants in a family. Often the significant clue to the family's origin may only be recorded for one individual in the entire family. Therefore, learning about the complete family is an important part of your research if you hope to unravel a family with a common surname.

Further, if you know all of the family who immigrated, then you will be better able to identify that family in records of their native country. This is especially important for persons with common surnames. Also, there will be times when the records in America do not fully identify the immigrants. Perhaps the immigrant died early, and appears in few records, or perhaps the ages you find in the census and other sources are so diverse, that you are not sure just when the immigrant was born. Ages in a passenger lists are typically more correct than in later American sources.

You may also learn the names of persons who traveled with the immigrant. In a recent case, seeking the Bavarian Uhl family in Pennsylvania, we noted Michael Boumer in the census living next to the family. He was from Bavaria, and was close to the wife's age. A published source gave the wife's maiden name as Brunner, so Michael was a possible brother. Upon finding the Uhl family in the arrival lists, we found Barbara Baumer, 45, as well as Johan and Michael Baumer, ages 24 and 23 next to them on the ship list. Michael's age matched the entry we had found on the census. Clearly these two families had immigrated together, likely as relatives. We now had the names of other immigrants, as well as the German spelling of the surname. These will be invaluable clues as we continue to identify the actual town where these families lived in Bavaria.