December 19, 2025
If you’ve tried to trace an immigrant ancestor after he arrived in the US, you know it’s not always easy. This is especially true of those immigrants who arrived during the heavy immigration period between the Civil War and World War I.
Finding the port of entrance is a good start, but relatively few immigrants stayed in the area they arrived. Commonly, recent immigrants moved around for a few years after arrival. If you’re lucky, you may find that your immigrant travelled directly to somewhere in the United States to join family or friends. For other immigrants, those first few years in the United States are a blank spot in their story.
There are records that can help fill in this blank, but it’s usually helpful to check all family sources first. For example, my great grandfather arrived in New York in 1867. He first joined his older brother in Scranton, Pennsylvania where the brother was working on a farm. The brothers weren’t excited about being farm laborers, so they soon moved to Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania where there were opportunities to work for the railroad and at steel mills. I learned about this period only because my great grandfather wrote an autobiographical sketch which detailed his early years in the US.
I verified his memories by finding my great grandfather and his family in the 1870 census. By then my grandfather’s parents and siblings had arrived in America. All were listed in Tunkhannock. Although my grandfather’s family stayed in Tunkhannock for nearly four years, the census was one of the few records that mentioned them in the area.
The only other record I found of my family’s stay was in school records. My grandfather’s three younger siblings attended the public school in Tunkhannock. All three were good students and appeared on several school honor rolls. The honor rolls were published in the local newspapers, the Wyoming Democrat and the Tunkhannock Republican. I found the newspapers on Newspapers.com.
Naturalization records can also help document an ancestor’s stay in an area. Before 1906, naturalization records could be filed in any court. These records can help locate where an ancestor was at a certain time. However, since the records were filed in any court, it may be difficult to find them if you don’t already know an ancestor was in a specific area.
Directories are another possible way to locate elusive ancestors. A wide search of online directories may turn up an ancestor in a heretofore unknown location.
Tracing immigrant ancestors is easier if the ancestor has an unusual name. My Fernelius ancestors are much easier to track than my Johnson ones. Almost anyone with the name Fernelius is likely to be a relative, and there are never very many of them in any database. For the Johnsons, however, broad searches are useless. There are just too many hits.
Figuring out where an ancestor was before he settled down in Minnesota or Washington or South Dakota can be a challenge. It’s worth spending some time trying since knowing how an ancestor spent his or her first years in America can add to the story of his/her life.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society