Ellis Island records oddity?

djac · Post by **djac** » 22 Mar 2011 19:16

Just wondering if someone can help clear up something I found in the Ellis Island records which appears a bit odd - well, to me anyway.

I was researching on behalf of someone in the US, whose mother had emigrated there in 1920.

I found the individual in the records - twice!

The details on the 2 records are mostly the same - name, age, arrival date, port of departure, ship.

The differences are :

Ethnicity given as 'England, English' on one record but 'G. Britain, English' on the other.

Last Place of Residence given as 'Hull, England' on one record but 'New York, NY' on the other.

Manifest Line Number is 0013 on one record but 0016 on the other.

Some information I was given was that the individual concerned went to the US against the wishes of the family and, unknow to her, the visa was removed from her travel documents, presumably in an attempt to get entry refused. It seems she was able to gain entry anyway.

Is this odd, or not at all unusual?

ID:5054

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 25 Mar 2011 22:41

Seems highly peculiar to me....

The Last Residence should be exactly that - it should only be NY if said person had previously been living in NY. Without seeing the rest of the pages, it's difficult to guess any reason - logically they should be 2 different people but if they have the same Friend or Relation in the UK, then this would seem unlikely.

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 27 Mar 2011 03:56

Two points:

The passenger lists were filled out at the point of origin, not at the destination.

Information may have been provided by the person who bought the tickets rather than the passengers themselves.

Do I understand that you have two passenger lists which refer to the same voyage, and the passenger is on different lines of the manifest in each copy?

I sometimes see passenger lists with some entries lined out because the passenger did not sail. If for some reason these lists were copied afterwards and those entries left out, it would put passengers who came after them on different lines of the manifest.

What is the provenance of the two copies?

djac · Post by **djac** » 28 Mar 2011 10:09

Thanks for the replies, folks.

The passenger lists I have looked at are on the Ellis Island website and are scans of the original ship's documents.

I will be having another look at them today.

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 29 Mar 2011 06:49

In my research, I've found one case where a person is listed in the same manifest twice. She was under age, and she was in the list of people who were held at the port upon arrival (presumably so someone who was an adult could come and meet her).

So it is possible for one person to show up in the lists for the same voyage twice.

djac · Post by **djac** » 29 Mar 2011 11:23

The individual concerned in my case was 19 years of age at the time, would this be considered under age?

As far as I can tell she was also travelling alone, and had payed for her own ticket.

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 29 Mar 2011 13:06

Why don't you give us the key details of the 2 lines (name, date, ship, page, line, whatever) and then we can find them ourselves and see if anything leaps out at us as a possible explanation. Or we can say we're just as confused as you!

djac · Post by **djac** » 30 Mar 2011 09:28

If you do an advanced search for Elsie Blain in 1920 you should get 2 records returned.

The first one (manifest line 13) has been struck through.

The second one (manifest line 16 but on a different page) has some interesting hand-written annotations. It is the last entry on the page and just underneath it is written '#16 M Leonard Snr Super' - at least that's what I make of it.

So the entry on that page for Elsie Blain seems to have needed some sort of sign-off.

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 02 Apr 2011 04:40

I recommend a careful examination of both search results -- both pages of both manifest entries.

The entry where your subject appears on line 13 is a list of alien passengers traveling in steerage.

The entry where your subject appears on line 16 is a list of alien passengers traveling in first class.

Since her entry on the steerage list is struck through, presumably her ticket was upgraded to first class.

djac said:
Last Place of Residence given as 'Hull, England' on one record but 'New York, NY' on the other.

The raw search result on Ellis Island says so, but I think that is an indexing error.

Look carefully at both sheets -- I see Column 11 'Last Residence' for the passenger as 'England Hull' for both steerage and first class. I think the New York index entry must have crept in from one of the Residence field for 'nearest relative in the US'.

This is one of the cases where I wish I had a dual-monitor setup. It's much easier to compare two entries when you can look at both at once.

Post by **tatewise** » 02 Apr 2011 18:11

RE: 'I wish I had a dual-monitor setup. It's much easier to compare two entries when you can look at both at once.'

You can open two copies of your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) and resize them to fill half the screen.

Windows 7 allows two windows to be easily resized to fill the left-hand and right-hand half of the screen respectively, either by dragging to screen edge, or by clicking Windows key + Left/Right arrow keys.

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 02 Apr 2011 20:38

1. I don't see any difference between the 2 sets of entries, other than that the line 13 entry has been scored through and therefore, as far as officialdom is concerned, it doesn't exist. (In fact, Ancestry didn't index it, I had to find it on the Ellis Island site).

2. It is possible her ticket was upgraded - granny must have had some money, as it was granny who paid for the ticket. I can't see any other reason for moving her entry from off the original page. (I did wonder if this was less of a first class page than a spare page but can see no annotations to support that view).

3. The unscored entry is slightly erroneous - it's stamped 'IN TRANSIT'. This was for a head tax that was refunded to people who weren't staying in the US but simply passing through. (See http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/manifests/left/ )
The others on that page are indeed heading elsewhere but Elsie is destined for NY, so the stamp 'IN TRANSIT' has been applied once too often.

4. The annotation in the name column I can't translate.

5. The annotations in and around the occupation column appear to relate to verification of her details on an application for naturalization. See -
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/manifests/occ/

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