Customs Passenger Lists

There are indexes for all of the ports for which Customs Passenger Lists exist but New York City’s list is very incomplete. In fact, the New York index only indexes the copies (not the originals) of the arrivals from 1820 through 1846. There is no index to New York arrivals from 1847 through 1896. It is, however, important to understand that even the pre-1846 index is incomplete. The Uhl family, noted above, arrived in 1845 at the port of New York, but they were not in the index. Fortunately, their naturalization documents had identified the date of their arrival, so we located them by finding the arrival list in chronological order. Since that index was created from the copies, and not the original, it is obvious that some lists, and likely many, were not indexed. Therefore do not be discouraged if you also don’t find them at Ancestry.com since that website is using the indexes to make links. Eventually they may produce their own indexes.

Conclusion

It is very likely that 90% or more of the passengers who officially immigrated to the United States during the 1800s were recorded and preserved on one or more passenger lists. Locating your immigrant and his or her family will provide invaluable clues to the original parish records in their homeland.