MyHeritage keeps adding more and more records to the company’s online collection and hopefully I have posted their announcements of these records as they became available. However, this time the latest collection is one that I am intimately familiar with.
My own ancestry is 50% French-Canadian (thanks to my mother’s 100% French-Canadian ancestry) and almost all of her relatives lived along both sides of the border dividing the northern area of the State of Maine from the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. In my genealogy research, I spent hundreds of hours going through the United States, Border Crossings from Canada, 1895-1956.
Unfortunately for me, the records were only available on microfilm years ago when I was researching these border crossings. It was a slow, meticulous, and often tedious process in those days. (MyHeritage: where were you when I needed you?)
I found my ancestors listed dozens of times. Not only did these people cross the border once to move to the United States, they often crossed the border in both directions for years in order to visit relatives for a weekend, to work on farms on both sides of the border, to be a midwife at a relative’s delivery of new babies, and all sorts of other (undocumented) reasons. It was not unusual to find one of my ancestors or great-aunts or great-uncles listed a dozen different times over a period of years in these records.
(Some of my relatives still live in Canada while others are in the U.S.)
Yes, it was fun finding these records but also tedious. However, MyHeritage has now simplified the search process for today’s and for future genealogists. Here is a brief announcement from MyHeritage and a much more detailed announcement may be found in the MyHeritage Blog:
During the late 19th century many immigrants to the U.S. arrived via passage from Canada to avoid harsh inspections at U.S. ports like Ellis Island. The collection, which includes images, is significant as it offers important details of travelers as they made their way to the United States. The MyHeritage index offers additional details not found in other versions of this collection, such as information on family members.
Search the U.S. Border Crossings from Canada, 1895–1956 collection now
The records include the individual’s name, age, gender, date of arrival, arrival port, marital status, birth date, birth place, last residence, destination, port of departure, and nationality, as well as the names and addresses of family members both in the United States and the home country. In addition to immigrants seeking citizenship in the United States, many of the records in the collection pertain to U.S. or Canadian citizens passing through the border for work or travel.
You can read more about the U.S. Border Crossings from Canada, 1895–1956 collection in the company’s blog post.