Find Ancestors for Free in Ship Passenger Lists – Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild

The most well known site on the Internet for finding your ancestors in free passenger lists is the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG). The ISTG has been online since September 1998 with a few volunteers who transcribed passenger lists. The ISTG now has over 500 volunteers who are completing this important work to be published on their website. As of today, there are over 9,000 passengers lists that have been transcribed! The lists that they transcribe are mainly from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) microfilm collection.

Once you are on the ISTG site, you will see that there are 10 volumes to search through. The search box on the main page will allow you to search all the volumes at once but it is not an advanced search so be prepared to wade through many results, particularly if the ancestor you are searching has a more common surname.

There is also the option to click on a specific volume where you can either search or browse through the listings by data, ship’s name, port of departure, port of arrival, captain’s names, or surnames of the passengers.

This gives you a little more flexibility however, you would have to go thought the volumes one by one in order to access the browsing ability. Once you find a particular list of entrance and go to that record, inside you will find not only a transcription of the list but also of the captain’s statement.

There are also a few special projects on the ISTG site. These include Jacobite Rebellion Ships, ISTG German Departures, ISTG New York Arrivals, Austria, Poland and Galicia Immigrants from 1889, Irish to Argentina, WWII Refugees to Australia, 1903 Project, and Halifax, Nova Scotia Departures & Arrivals.

photo credit: Images of History