Family Historian User Group

My husband's family came to the US from Devon, and like many families, went back and forth between England and the US multiple times. Some of the trips are annoyingly timed so that they just missed the census -- on both sides of the Atlantic.

On the US side I've been able to fill in some of the gaps by using City Directories, military records, and other records which have residence information. However, for those relatives who went back to England before 1910 and stayed in England, I don't have any information about where they settled -- they might have gone back to Devon, but we don't know.

Aside from searching for all the other relatives I know about who stayed in England and never went to the US at all (in case the people returning to the UK stayed with them before establishing their new home), do you have any suggestions for what record sets might be useful to show people in context --- e.g. family groups that would help me know if I've got the right family?

Obviously the BT 26 lists (Board of Trade Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1890 to 1960) might be helpful once they are digitised, and if the FO 611 records (Passport Registers Index of Names) were online, those would be of interest, too.

Do you have any advice for what else I might look for, or what data cleanup I might want to do to get ready for the release of the 1911 Census?

Jan

ID:2646

Have you tried
http://www.ellisisland.org/default.asp ?

Also should have mentioned
http://www.findmypast.com/passengerList ... on?redef=0
The index is free & that will give you an idea if you wish to pay.

Just to clarify: I am in the US, researching locations that are not where I currently live, so much of my research is done online.

I have access to the Ellis Island records, and the other US ports (via Ancestry.com). The questions I have now are a result of finding second entries -- where the person entering has been in the US before, and the dates of the previous stay have been given in the passenger list. For example, one of the family first entered the US in 1898. Then on the passenger list for his second entry it says he was previously in the US for six years, and the person making the list has written 1898-1904. The manifest is from September 1905. I am trying to find out where this person was in the earlier part of 1905.

I have the town from the 'last residence' question but I need strategies for non-census years to locate the relatives he might have stayed with. What other records might exist for South Devon which are not census records?

It would be useful to look at the BT 26 passenger lists for people entering England to see if I could find his arrival in England, but I have no access to them. As I understand it, no one does at the moment, because the records are being digitized and won't be available again until 2008. And as far as I know, the records haven't been indexed by name, and one has to know the ship and date to look things up on the films.

Let's see what Find My Past says:

Finally, there are no incoming voyages to Britain. These are contained within The National Archives' BT26 record series, which is available to search in person in the public search room at Kew. BT26 has not yet been digitised and no name index exists for passengers. However, voyages indexed by ship name are being added to TNA's online Catalogue.

The difficulty here is that when leaving England to go to the USA, if a person stayed here they kept track of the ship on which they sailed and their arrival date because they needed that information to submit if they wanted to be Naturalized as US Citizens.

But for the trips back to England, at the time most if not all of my husband's relatives were still British Citizens -- therefore keeping a family record of when those trips were made, and on what ships they sailed, would not have been important. You might as well ask me the flight number of the last trip I made to visit my mother -- I might recall the airline and I might even be able to work out the day, but once I have discarded the boarding pass or ticket receipt I am not likely to have any record of the flight number.

I will keep checking Find My Past to see if they have been added since the last time I looked there, but I suspect they won't be available until after the digitization project is complete.

For those of you who do need to search the Ellis Island records, one can do so for free (registration is required, but there is no charge). I highly recommend using Steve Morse's One-Step Web Pages at http://www.stevemorse.org since Morse provides a very sophisticated search form.

Thanks for your reply.

Jan

Just wanted to post a follow-up in case anyone can advise me of new records coming online in the UK.

I found in the US Passport Applications a record for a woman who may be my husband's great-aunt Edith. In the passport application it says she planned to leave 'about March 15th 1919' for England to care for a 'young orphaned sister'. Her application says that she plans to stay for about 6 months.

I have a ship manifest from the 17 Oct 1919 arrival in New York of the younger sister, apparently traveling unaccompanied -- she was detained for being under age, presumably until someone met her. The name and address in the passport application for Edith matches the 'nearest relative' for the younger sister in the ship manifest.

But Edith herself is also listed in the same manifest (on a separate page, since she is a US Citizen because of her marriage).

Given that I have her address in November of 1919, you'd think it would be simple to find Edith in the 1920 US Census, but I haven't been able to find her so far.

She is still in the US as of 1930 (living with her husband, but at a different address in the same city).

It is maddening -- if I only could see the manifest for Edith's outbound voyage, I might be able to get an address for where the younger sister was living before she came to the States.

There is a relative listed in the UK for the younger sister in the ship manifest -- I have considered searching for that person in the census in the UK -- but in 1900 and 1910 Augusta and her husband were in the US. (But they are back in the UK by 1919, so I'll have to wait until the 1921 UK Census is available to look for them.)

At the moment the 1920 US Census is the great blank space on my mental 'map' that has 'here be dragons' on it. I am having so much difficulty finding people that I think the only solution may be to walk through the images for the whole town. How I envy those of you who can search a census by street address.

Jan

Just wanted to post an update --

Ancestry.co.uk has added some records from BT 26 -- the appropriate 'database' is this one:

Ancestry.com. UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008. Original data: Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA). Series BT26, 1,472 pieces.

Data imaged from the National Archives, London, England.

If you have found family members in the lists at Ellis Island and other ports in the US, it might be worth a look in case they went back and forth.

The news release from TNA is here:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news ... m?news=rss

UK incoming passenger lists go online

20 October 2008

The UK incoming passenger lists for 1878 to 1960 (series BT 26) have been launched online by Ancestry.co.uk.

Jan

You specifically mention Devon which has a fairly lively, judging from its web site, Family History Society - and a forum where you can post questions
http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/index.htm
if you have not already given it a go someone there may be able to help

It has been a while since I last visited their website -- thanks for the reminder.

Jan

An update:

Ancestry now has the records I wanted (passengers incoming to the UK) and is tempting me with a discount of 25% off if I sign up by the end of the month. (I suspect they are hurting because of the bad state of the US Economy.)

The family group I am tracing came to the USA in 1898 and stayed until 1904. Some of the older children came back between 1905-1910.

I have found some of my husband's family in the 1911 census, but I still don't know the whereabouts of my husband's great-aunt Edith.

I have census records for Edith in 1891, 1900, and in 1930. I have her passport application from 1919 and references to her in passenger lists, also from 1919.

I can't find her in the census anywhere in between. She is not listed in the household of any of her siblings in 1910 or 1920.

I suspect that Edith was married twice, but I can't find a record of either marriage at the Mass archives or at FreeBMD. She is married to husband #2 in 1919 and in 1930, and I can't find him in 1920 either. Nor can I find any census or vital records in this period for husband #1 -- the references I have to that marriage date it to about 1905.

This morning I cross-checked the addresses I had against the US Post Office's zip code finder and her town's tax records.

For the 1930 address, the city says the current house was built in 1922.

For the 1919 address, the Post Office says it is 'non-deliverable' which suggests that the building that was there in 1919 has been torn down (and there is no parcel listed in the tax records with that street address).

The Massachusetts Archives Vital Records search only goes up to 1910, and I suspect Edith married her 2nd husband after that. (His first wife died in 1908 and he is listed as 'widowed' in the 1910 Census.)

Could Edith have been in England in 1910?

There is a woman with the same name in the 1911 Census in the right area, but her birth date is off by more than 20 years, so it does not seem likely that person is the right Edith.

Perhaps I will learn more once I get access to the passenger lists for the return trips to England. But until this, this is maddening.

Jan

Jan,
If you don't want to be tempted by the 25% discount. Send me a message with the details you are looking for and i will have a search of that collection for you.

Richard

Richard -- thanks very much for your kind offer of a lookup.

I probably should bite the bullet and get the World Collection for at least one year. In addition to the English relatives, I have German records to look for also.

Jan

No worries Jan,
The offers always open if you change your mind.

Richard