Free Ships Passenger Lists & Naturalization Records

Visitors to Olive Tree Genealogy often ask me for a list of all the free ships passenger lists I have published online. My site is quite large and can take time to navigate to find the records, so I understand why there can be some confusion.

In hopes this might help genealogists, I've compiled a list of the free passenger lists and naturalization records on my sites.

 Missing Friends The Missing Friends Project is abstracting the names of those who immigrated from UK to America or Canada and who were inquired about by family in various 19th Century newspapers. 
   Passenger Books of J & J Cooke, Shipping Agents sailings from Londonderry Ireland to Quebec, St. John New Brunswick, New Orleans Louisiana and Pennsylvania from 1847 to 1871
   Pennsylvania Baggage Lists 1809 
   New York Almshouse Records 1819 to 1840 contain the names of the ship each person sailed on, plus dates of arrival. Includes arrivals in Canadian ports
    Emigrants from England in New York City Almshouse 1818-1830 - 254 names of English immigrants to Canada & USA including the name of the ship they sailed on.
   New York Almshouse Records 1855 to 1858 contain the name of the ship and the arrival date and port for each person.
   List of those who died while in Staten Island Quarantine May 1849 - Dec. 1850 (not available at this time but coming back online soon)
   Names of Emigrants from 1845-1847 from the Records of James Allison, Emigrant Agent at Montreal Quebec Canada
   Return of Emigrants Landed at the Port of Kingston Ontario, Canada (1861-1882) 
   Peter Robinson Settlers sailing 1823 & 1825 Ireland to Canada
   English to America 1617-1778 Child Apprentices in America from Christ's Hospital, London England (not available at this time but coming back online soon)
   English Immigrants to USA 1773-1776
  Poor Irish to England Includes Ports of Departure & Arrival plus number of years in England or Scotland. Over 1,600 names
(not available at this time but coming back online soon)
   Irish Emigration Lists, 1833-1839 Lists of Emigrants Extracted from the Ordnance Survey Memoirs from Counties Londonderry and Antrim
   Passenger Lists from the New York Times (Arrivals & Departures)1851-1929 (coming back soon)
   New Netherland Ships Passenger Lists Project Lists of those sailing from The Netherlands to New Netherland (now New York) 1654-1664 came from the West India Company Account Book and consist only of names of those who owed for their passage. There is no published record of those who paid for passage before leaving. Olive Tree Genealogy has reconstructed several passenger lists for these ships using other primary sources.

Naturalization & Citizenship Records

 Naturalization Records Naturalization Records in the USA & Canada. Includes searchable Naturalization Records, Declarations of Intent, Certificates of Citizenship
 USA Passport Applications
 USA Alien Registrations
 USA Oaths of Allegiance
 USA Voters Registrations
 Canadian Passport Records

New JJ Cooke Ships Irish Passenger Lists online

Irish passenger lists from shipping records can be found in Passenger Books of J & J Cooke, Shipping Agents. Sailings from Londonderry to Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Quebec, St. John New Brunswick & New Orleans Louisiana, 1847-1871

Source: Reference D.2892/1/1-14 (see also MIC.13 in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)

I have recently added twenty more ships to my free online JJ Cooke Ships Passenger Lists on Olive Tree Genealogy

Hope you find an ancestor or two! 

Finding Ancestors on Ships Passenger Lists to Canada Before 1865

Before 1865 Ships Passenger lists on Ships Sailing to Ports in Canada did not have to be archived. It is a challenging time period to find passenger lists! But there ARE alternate records - shipping agent records, emigration agent ledger books, newspaper extracts are only a few

One such set of records are the Irish Canadian Emigration Records, 1823-1849 This database contains various records and reports of Canadian emigration agents James Allison and A.J. Buchanan. Among the various records are some emigration and orphan lists. These lists are searchable by name.

As well, Filling in the Gaps has links to 21 online databases for alternate immigration records for pre-1865 Canada. These include links to immigration officer records, steamship sailings up the St. Lawrence River, Custom House Passenger Lists, J J Cooke Shipping Agent Records, Poor Law Union Immigration from England and more. 

Many of these links are to Olive Tree Genealogy free projects. Some are to free websites not associated with Olive Tree Genealogy and a few are pay-to-view databases on other sites. 

If you  are stuck looking for your ancestors on a ships list arriving in Canada before 1865 you should take a look at Filling in the Gaps

Finding ancestors on Ships to Canada Before 1865

In 1844 18,330 immigrants arrived at the port of Montreal - and that's just ONE port, so imagine how many arrived at all Canadian ports in total.

Before 1865, it wasn't mandatory that passenger lists of ships arriving in Canada be kept. So you may find a few stray lists, or shipping company records - such as the JJ Cooke Shipping Records online at http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/jjcooke.shtml

These are sailings from Londonderry to Philadelphia, Quebec, St. John,New Brunswick, and Louisiana from 1847-71, or shipping agent reports like the Hawke Papers, Records of assisted passage, and so on.

There are other records that can substitute for a passenger list. For example, TheShipsList.com is extracting newspaper reports of arrivals and also listing names of passengers who took steamboats once they landed. In many cases you can consider yourself lucky if you find an ancestor on one of these lists!

There is also the Return of Emigrants Landed at the Port of Kingston Ontario, Canada 1861-1882 which gives the final destination of the individuals, their date of arrival at Kingston and more. It is found at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/kingston1861oct-1862may.shtml These may have your ancestor's name travelling inland once he or she arrived in Canada.

Here is an example of the variety of records that fill in the gaps of pre 1865 Canadian passenger lists ---

Nancy Boggs, 39, Sarah Boggs 17 and Eliza Boggs 14 were listed, along with several others, in a letter that A. C. Buchanan, Chief Agent in the Quebec Immigration Office sent on 19 June 1846.

He prefaces the list of names with "the undermentioned person have been sent out by the Londonderry Union and I have paid them here a sum equal to 10/Stg. each. They are well recommended and the entire of them young and old are well conducted and may be safely employed as servants."

There is more, but this is just an example to show that if you happened to be looking for Nancy or someone else in that letter, you'd be very lucky to find this much!

So, hoping I haven't discouraged anyone - here's two URLs for Ships arriving in Canada

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/canada/

http://www.theships.list.com/

New Orleans Ship Records

New Features on the One-Step website

A commercial website, ancestry.com, has the ship records
for the major US ports These include the Ports of New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Galveston, and San
Francisco. The One-Step website already had a trio of
search forms for each of those ports -- one to simplify the
searching for passengers, the second to provide for direct
access to the manifest microfilms if you know the roll and
frame number, and the third to determine the roll and frame
number for any ship arrival. Now the One-Step site has
added such tools for the Port of New Orleans as well.

These new forms appear in the Other Ports section of the
One-Step site.

Also see New Orleans ships passenger lists at OliveTreeGenealogy.com Don't miss the JJ Cooke Shipping Lists arriving in New Orleans 1847-1871