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The Kitchen Table

Ancestry.com Help!

10 years ago

Have you had experience with the above?

I have done extensive genealogy research but was delighted when I received a six-month gift subscription to Ancestry.

I have been unable to find a single thing I searched for. As a test I entered names I knew for passenger arrival ship lists. They did not find them. My subscription is about to expire and I'd like some hints to try during the last week I have it. In particular I'm looking at the 1850 Pennsylvania census.

I think some of you have had better luck than I.

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Comments (4)

Lindsey_CA
10 years ago
I've been away from the Table for a while, and just now saw this message. Click on my name on this post, and send me a message through Houzz, telling me what you are looking for. I will see what I can find. Be sure to activate messaging in your profile so that I can send you replies. Or, in your message to me, give me your e-mail address and I will reply that way.

As an aside, you could also check the Ellis Island Passenger Search for folks. Not everyone came through Ellis Island, but so many did... Also, be aware that often names are transcribed incorrectly; and many immigrants changed the spelling of their surnames when arriving in the States (usually by changing a vowel or dropping the final vowel if the name ended in a vowel).
chisue
10 years ago
Hi Lindsey -- This thread reminds me to ask if you know something about immigrants arriving in NYC pre-Ellis Island. My then-teen grandmother, her widowed mother and two siblings arrived then. I have the ship's manifest, and I know where they went, but I wondered how people were processed...if they even were processed. Did this involve something called 'The Castle'?

(My grandmother's mother and sibs all died of TB within a few years of coming to New York, but I don't know where they contracted it -- home, ship, the city.)
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Like I said, public libraries can be very helpful too. After I had the date of death, I contacted the library in the Mass. city he lived in for many years. (They had previously looked up & scanned me a copy of the newspaper coverage of his 1930 wedding, but couldn't help me on my original request without a date of death.) However, even with the date of death, they found nothing. It was suggested I contact the Boston Public Library, which I did via email within the last few days. I was very surprised with their efficient service, as in today's snail-mail, I received an manila envelope with copies of his obit from three different Mass. newspapers, and stating there was "no charge". Seems he moved from his original home to another Mass. city seven years before his 1969 death according to the most detailed obit, and was remarried (I had an inkling that the 1930 marriage ended in divorce, but not positive---now with the name of a successor wife, I am).
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Kris_zone6 -- I agree with you that Ancestry can't exist if everything were free to everyone (after all, think of the network servers and storage capacity they have to maintain [and continually increase the storage capacity as more and more databases come online]. And undoubtedly they paid to have many, many databases microfilmed and transcribed. But, more and more databases are online at Ancestry on a free-to-all basis because of the volunteer Ancestry Archives Project. It may very well be that the records you recently found on your great-grandfather were in one of the new free databases.
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ghoghunter
10 years ago
The Immigrant station before Ellis was Castle Garden. There is a web site for it with some ship lists but not all are on the list.
chisue
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ghoghunter -- Thank you. I have the ship's mainfest. I looked up the Castle Garden/Battery website, but it doesn't tell me anything about any 'intake' procedures. (There's a lot of information about the procedures at Ellis Island.)

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