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Maybe They Teleported: Finding Elusive Passenger Lists

April 26, 2024

Passenger lists are my favorite records. They document a momentous time in our ancestors’ lives – the day they set forth on a journey to a new life in America. Finding an ancestor’s name on a ship’s list verifies an event that changed our ancestor lives. It continues to impact our own lives even today.

 

As thrilling as finding our ancestors’ names on passenger lists can be, it’s not always easy. I’ve spent decades looking for passenger lists for three of my great grandparents. So far, I haven’t found any of them.  At this point, I’ve added them to my “maybe they teleported” section on my family tree. While I don’t seriously believe that my relatives teleported to America, it is frustrating to search through endless passenger lists with no results.

 

Despite this, I continue to search for my family’s passenger lists. One of my favorite stories about passenger lists concerns one set of my second great grandparents and their four children. This family emigrated from Sweden in the 1860s. The family had the unusual surname of Fernelius, and I had had good luck in finding passenger records for other members of their extended family.

 

Thanks to census records that listed dates of arrival I knew about when the family arrived. This information helped me narrow my search, but after several years of on and off searching, I still couldn’t find this family.

 

To make the search even more daunting, during the 19th century, information on passenger lists was sparse. Names, gender, ages, occupation, and place of origin was the only information provided. First names were often abbreviated or merely indicated by an initial. The list makers were supposed to be able to understand multiple languages to enable them to record names correctly. However, spelling was not their forte. Surnames were spelled in ways that make them almost impossible to decipher.

 

I eventually consigned these grandparents to the teleported section of my family tree. Then I came upon the naturalization record of one of their sons (not my direct ancestor). As part of his Declaration of Intent, he gave the exact date he arrived in America with his family. Using this exact date, I searched manually for my family’s arrival. Almost immediately I found a family with the right ages, genders, and first initials. With some squinting, I could imagine that the list maker had meant to write Fernelius when he made the scribble he used for their surname.

 

It was clear that this was my elusive family, but even when I knew the ship’s name and the date it arrived, I still couldn’t find them on the passenger list index. I looked at the actual passenger list again and noticed the location the list maker had listed as my family’s place of origin. I immediately knew why I’d never been able to find this family. My Swedish family was listed as being from Italy!

 

I don’t know why my Swedish family became Italians on that passenger list. Maybe the list maker thought Fernelius sounded Italian? I’ll never know for sure, but I did learn that it’s important to keep looking for passenger lists even if it seems like you’ll never find them.

 

Although it’s sometimes easier to shrug and guess that your ancestors must have teleported, unless they came from the future, they really didn’t.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

 

 

 

Ineligible for Citizenship

April 19, 2024

From the beginning, the United States has considered some categories of people ineligible to become citizens. If your ancestors fall into any of these categories, they could never become citizens, no matter how long they spent in the United States. That means that you won’t find any kind of naturalization documents for them.

 

The Naturalization Act of 1790 was the earliest law which spelled out exactly who could and could not be naturalized. It stated that free, white persons of good character who had resided in the United States for at least two years and who took an oath of allegiance could become citizens. Indentured servants, non-whites and slaves were specifically excluded from American citizenship.

 

Although the law did not specifically mention women, women were not considered “persons” under the law at that time. No women could vote. Married women could not own property in their own name. By the early 1800s, men who naturalized conferred derivative citizenship on their wives and minor children.

 

After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Naturalization Act of 1870 granted naturalization rights to free white persons and persons of African nativity or descent.

 

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. This act barred Chinese and other Asians from emigrating to the United States. It also specifically banned them from naturalizing, although any children born in the United States did receive birthright citizenship. This ban continued until 943.

 

After a long debate and years of struggle, Native Americans were finally admitted to full American citizenship in 1924. Despite this, it was not until 1957 that all states allowed them to vote in federal and state elections.

 

If an ancestor belonged to any of the above categories, few naturalization records will exist for them. That doesn’t mean that no records will ever be found. Occasionally a single woman or a widow was naturalized so she could make a homestead claim. Since there were no specific laws regulating this, some courts would naturalize women and even members of other prohibited classes. It’s always worth looking for the records because you never know what might turn up.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

Not Everyone Naturalized

April 12, 2024

Many genealogists assume that their immigrant ancestors became American citizens as soon as they were able. While many did, some did not. During the peak immigration years of the mid-19th century through the early 20th century, at least 25% of eligible immigrants never naturalized.

 

Some of these immigrants came to the U.S. when they were infants and lived the entirety of their lives here. They just chose not to become citizens. Even today, some immigrants live nearly their whole lives in the United States but never become citizens.

 

When you are looking for naturalized records for your own immigrant ancestors, remember that not all of them naturalized. If you can’t find naturalization records for them, it may be because they never naturalized.

 

My second great grandfather and his two younger brothers are an example of this phenomenon. The three Terry brothers, Parshall Peter, John May and George Thompson were all born in Canada. Their parents brought them to the United States in 1838 when the boys were six, four and three months old. All three of the children lived the rest of their lives in America. None of them ever returned to Canada.

 

Timothy Terry, the boys’ father, never naturalized. Had he done so before the boys were eighteen, they would have gained derivative citizenship from him automatically upon his taking an oath of citizenship. Since he didn’t, they needed to naturalize when they reached adulthood if they wanted to be citizens.

 

Only one of them did. The middle brother, John May, naturalized after 1900 when he was over seventy years old. He had filed a homestead claim. To finalize his claim, he needed to be a citizen. Apparently, he hadn’t felt the need to become a citizen before that time.

 

The youngest brother, George Thompson, never filed for citizenship. He fought for the Union in the Civil War which would have made his citizenship application simple. Despite that, he didn’t. The final census he appears in, the 1920 one when he was over eighty years old, lists him as Al – for alien.

 

Then there was my second great grandfather, Parshall Peter. Parshall never filed for citizenship, but he seems to have lied about it. In the 1870s he filed a homestead claim. As part of the finalization of his claim, he filled out paperwork in which he stated that he was a “natural born citizen.” His application was approved, and he received title to the property he’d claimed.

 

I don’t know why my Terry relatives were so casual about citizenship. I suspect that whether they were citizens didn’t impact their lives in any negative way, so they didn’t bother to spend the time, effort, and money it would have taken.

 

If you are having a hard time finding naturalization records for your own ancestors, maybe they were like my Terry Family. There are various documents that can help you determine whether an ancestor naturalized. Check census records for citizenship status. Military records such as the World War I Draft Registration Cards are another way to check whether someone was naturalized.

 

Remember that not everyone naturalized, so don’t be surprised if you find that one of your ancestors was among that group.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society