Ellis Island Immigration Records – The key to finding your immigrant ancestors

The United States has been the destination for millions of immigrants. You can find out if your immigrants entered the United Stated through New York City by checking out Ellis Island immigration records. Ellis Island opened in 1892, taking over from the Castle Garden facility. There is a lot of information about Ellis Island immigration that is available to you on the Ellis Island website. Information such as the island’s history, its immigrants, and its immigration records can be found within it’s easy to use search functions.

Ellis Island was one of the busiest entry points to the United States for immigrants from all over the world. Over 100 million Americans, or about 40% of the population, can trace their roots to immigrants that entered the United States through Ellis Island. Ellis Island immigration records are accessible in one of the best free online genealogy databases.

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1902

Ellis Island immigration, 1902

The Ellis Island website contains records from passenger manifests of over 22 million immigrants using Ellis Island as their port of entry. Among the data you can search for are name, gender, age upon arrival in the United States, marital status, carrier ship, port of origin, and the last known place of residence. These important pieces of genealogical information can prove to be very important in tracing your family history.

There is also a great little site that allows you to search the Ellis Island immigration records in one step. This means you can put many different search parameters right at the beginning of your search to help you find your ancestor faster. There are several options like the Ellis Island white form and gold form, ship pictures and ship lists.

If you are having trouble locating your ancestor on the Ellis Island website, you may want to get the 14-day free trial at Ancestry.com. You can then search through the mass of New York passenger lists that they currently have online. Sometimes your ability to find your ancestors depends on which organization indexed the records, so you might have better luck using Ancestry’s index.

Immigration records are the key to discovering where your ancestors originated from and so it’s very exciting when you finally find your relatives hiding in the Ellis Island immigration records!

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