Expanded Ellis Island Immigrant Records 1820-1957 Online
What do over a 100 million Americans have in common? Their ancestors immigrated through Ellis Island or one of the New York Harbor immigration stations that preceded it. FamilySearch and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. announced today the entire collection of Ellis Island New York Passenger Arrival Lists from 1820 to 1957 are now available online on both websites giving the opportunity to the descendants of over 100 million arrivals to discover their ancestors quicker and free of charge.
Originally preserved on microfilm, 9.3 million images of historical New York passenger records spanning 130 years were digitized and indexed in a massive effort by 165,590 online FamilySearch volunteers. The result is a free searchable online database containing 63.7 million names, including immigrants, crew, and other passengers traveling to and from the United States through the nation’s largest port of entry.
“The Foundation is delighted to make these immigration records accessible to the public for free for the first time,” said Stephen A. Briganti, President and CEO of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. “This completes the circle of our decades-long collaboration with the team from FamilySearch, which began with providing the public with unprecedented access to their genealogy and sparking a world-wide phenomenon linking past and present.”
The expanded collections can be searched at the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation’s website or at FamilySearch in three collections, representing three distinct periods of migration history.
- New York Passenger Lists (Castle Garden) 1820-1891
- New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island) 1892-1924
- New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists 1925-1957
The ship manifests list passengers, their names, age, last place of residence, who is sponsoring them in America, the port of departure, and their date of arrival in New York Harbor and sometimes other interesting information, such as how much money they carried on them, number of bags, and where on the ship they resided during its sail from overseas.
For millions of Americans, the first chapter in the story of their lives in the New World was written on tiny Ellis Island located in upper New York Bay off the coast of Manhattan Island. An estimated 40 percent of Americans are descended from those who emigrated, primarily from European countries in the period from 1892 to 1954. Millions of them passed through Ellis Island’s immigration center in route to lives in “the land of the free”.
A lesser known fact is that what we know today as “Ellis Island” didn’t exist before 1892. Ellis Island’s predecessor—Castle Garden—was actually America’s first immigration center. Today it is known as Castle Clinton National Park, a 25-acre waterfront historical park located within The Battery, one of New York City’s oldest parks and the departure point for tourists visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
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About the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1982 to raise funds for and oversee the historic restorations of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, working in partnership with the National Park Service/U.S. Department of the Interior. In addition to restoring the monuments, the Foundation created museums on both islands, The American Immigrant Wall of Honor®, the American Family Immigration History Center®, and the Peopling of America Center® which transformed the museum into the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Its newest project will be the new Statue of Liberty Museum. The Foundation’s endowment has funded over 200 projects at the islands.
FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch and its predecessors have been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 5,000 family history centers in 129 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I believe his mother &:father- Celestia & Septin were from France . Not sure when they would have immigrated to U.S. I assume they would have come thru Ellis or Liberty island. Can anyone shed light?
Sincerely, Cynthia A. Rivas
Is work still on-going to index the immigrants at Ellis Island? If some manifests were missed, how can they now be indexed and included? Thank you.
Thank you
There is another possibility, Demetreon could actually have been his last name under the correct Demetriou, or Dimitriou. This name exists in Greek as a Greek name or a Cypriot name.So this is another possibiliity.
In the early part of the 20th century, Greeks arriving were mostly from the ports of Piraeus near Athens, or the port of PATRAS OR the port of Thessaloniki (called SALONICA then since it had not yet liberated from the Ottoman Turks. Many Greeks also arrived from what is now Turkey, from areas Greek since antiquity but had beeconquered by the Ottomans. In the early part of the 20th century, the Ottomans persecuted, killed, raped etc. many Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire. Those that managed to escape the genocide went to liberated Greece or went tAmerica.When they arrived in America, their country of origin was Turkey so the records would show them as TURKISH CITIZENS, NOT Greek, despite the fact they were Greek, because their papers were Turkish. That further complicqtes searches.
If the last name is Dimitriou,or Demetriou,the origin is from mainland Greece where it is q common nqme. You should check the Greek national qrchives to see if you can find the name there.To further complicate your search,Greek Cypriots often have the same first and last name. So if your uncle's first name was Dimitiros(Demetrios or Dimitris) and he anglicized it to James, and his last name was Demetriou (Dimitriou), it would mean that he was James of James, in other words, his own father's name is James (Dimitris). Cypriots are ethnically Greek and it is not uncommon for them even today, to simply move to Greece just like you move to the next town, since Greece accepts them as Greeks and gives them automatic citizenship. It is possible, a Greek Cypriot moved to Greece, then subsequently immigrated to america then.
You say you know many things about his nurclear family. If yousend me the info, I may be able to direct you to the right source or town,based on your info. Hope I helped a bit, not easy searching for lost relatives.
You mention war so I suspect he and his family went there as refugees. After WWII, when Greece had been liberated from the Germans and Italians, the communists in the country found the opportunity to try to take over Greece and turn it over to the eastern block, where Russia belonged. The majority of Greeks were pro western, with Britain, America and France. A long, bloody civil war took place and it lasted a few years. There were many atrocities committed on both sides but mostly by the communist Greeks who actually stole many Greek children as they retreated and sent them to Eastern block countries, like Romenia, Chechoslovakia, But mostly Russia.I dont know whether Lithuania was part of the USSR at the time but I suspect it was. Many of these children were lost forever, never found their parents again, some found their way back in the 1980's and either found their parents or at least their heritage. At the end of the civil war, since the pro west forces won, the communist leaning Greeks were either executed or escaped to eastern block countries and remained there, or escaped elsewhere.
It is very possible your father's family was communist Greek and escaped with their children to Lithuania. Or, if your father found himself in Lithuania by himself, it is possible the retreating communists stole him from his family as they did many children of the pedomazoma(child collection).