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Location: Travel > Speech on Ship Lists
Finding Germans from
Russia on Passenger Ship Lists Using the Internet
Below are the complete transcripts of the speech given by Patrice Miller
at the 2003 AHSGR convention in Yakima, WA titled,
Finding Germans from
Russia on Passenger Ship Lists Using the Internet. Much of the information
is similar to that found on the ship list
page but it provides more details
in a step by step guide.
What a great time to be a Germans from Russia researcher! Never
before has so much information been available on the internet.
Not just general genealogy information, but information specific
to Germans from Russia. In particular, there is a wealth of
passenger ship lists indexes for Germans from Russia. Nearly 60%
of Germans from Russia on ship lists can be found using the
internet! I have been able to locate 3,000 people on ship lists
for my ancestral village of Yagodnaya Polyana, the vast majority
from the internet. It is doubtful that any other ethnic group
can say the same thing. Its because of all the dedicated Germans
from Russia volunteers. In most cases the information found on
the internet is an index and not a copy of the actual passenger
ship list.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF GERMANS FROM RUSSIA
There's so much it's hard to know where to begin. Lets start
with the various indexes unique to Germans from Russia. What
better place to start than the American Historical Society of
Germans from Russia (AHSGR). For 25 years AHSGR has published
ship list indexes for Germans from Russia in their periodicals,
most of them submitted by Allyn Brosz and Emma Schwabenland Haynes.
Later, volunteers headed up by Terry Sterkel compiled an electronic
index of all the ship list indexes published by AHSGR & the GRHS
through about 1999. This became first available in the resource kit.
Later it was put on the website so you can search all the ship
lists published in the AHSGR periodicals by surname, village or
by ship name. This a "limited" index because when you find your
surname or village, the information provided is the AHSGR periodical
in which the information is located. Many ship lists for early years,
from the 1870's through 1880s, can be found here that are not
available elsewhere.
CANADIAN PORTS
If your German from Russia ancestors immigrated through Canada
then you are in luck. George Dorscher has spent many years,
indexing all the Germans from Russia in ship list to the three
main Eastern Canadian ports: Quebec, St. John and Halifax for the
years 1900-1914. These indexes are massive. And thanks to these
indexes, I was able to locate my grandfather's arrival in 1913 at
the port of St. John. I had been searching for years, borrowing
the Canadian ship list microfilms through interlibrary loan from
the Canadian archives. The handwriting on these Canadian ship lists
are as bad or worse than the US ship lists in my experience. So the
fact that George Dorscher waded through 14 years of ships lists
at those three ports is amazing, true dedication to the Germans
from Russia community.
ODESSA DIGITAL LIBRARY
These indexes can be found at the Odessa Digital Library, some may
know it as pixel. At the Odessa Digital Library, they are another
group of dedicated volunteers putting massive amounts of Germans
from Russia information on the web: Dale Wahl, Marty McMahon and
Roger Ehrich. The best part is that all the information is easily
searchable on their web site. In fact they have a very powerful
search where you can use "wild cards: to substitute for different
letters. But beware there are misspelling in these ship list indexes,
like every index. This is because of the poor handwriting,
misspellings and faded or damaged pages in the ship list. So if you
don't find the names you are looking for using their nifty search
function, then browse the lists. You might think that this site is
kind of low tech since all the indexes are a list on a text page,
not in some database, but for the researcher it is preferable. By
being able to browse the list, you may be able to find the names
you are looking for even if they are terribly misspelled. And here
is a tip to using these lists, search by the destination if you know
it. As a village coordinator this really worked for me since the
people from my village tended to settle in specific areas. Also
don't assume just because your ancestors settled in the USA they
came through U.S. ports. Many Germans from Russia headed for the
US came through Canadian ports. I believe it was cheaper and the
medical requirements were less rigorous. And some Germans from Russia
headed for Canada came through U.S. ports. The Odessa Digital library
also has some other helpful ship list indexes, Portland, Maine
1906-1912 prepared by Allyn Brosz and Mennonite Passenger Lists,
1872 to 1904. Additionally there are miscellaneous individual ship
lists indexed there.
JANET'S GERMANS FROM RUSSIA RESEARCH
Janet Flickinger is another tireless Germans from Russia researcher
who has indexed large amounts of ship lists as well as other records
such as naturalization. She has created her own web site called Janet's
Germans from Russia Research. What's so great about Janet's records is
that she has indexed ship lists at ports generally not found on other
web sites, such as the ports of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Janet's
indexes don't cover solid year ranges, but miscellaneous individual
complete microfilms.
GENE JENKINS - BORDER CROSSINGS & SHIP LISTS
Recently Gene Jenkins has started indexing ship list and border crossing
records instead of his usual census records. He is indexing those records
that are generally not available elsewhere on the internet, specifically
Baltimore and St. Albans border crossing records. St. Albans is the name
of the records of those crossing the border from Canada to the USA. You
may be surprised to learn that probably 25% of those records are actual
ship lists. The ship lists are generally for someone entering a Canadian
port going directly to the USA. Additionally, the regular St. Albans
records (not the ship lists) are very detailed, accurate and legible.
They cover the year 1895-1924. Besides the usual family information,
most of these border crossing records list the Canadian port they
immigrated through, as well as the date and ship name. That information
is not always accurate because it requires the person crossing the
border to remember the information, but for the most part, its pretty
good. These indexes can be found on the Volga web site. But the indexes
are for all Germans from Russia not just Volga Germans. So far for the
St. Alban's border crossings he has indexed some the surnames starting
with the letter G, H, M and W, 8 microfilms in all. For Baltimore he
has indexed the surnames starting with W. The Baltimore index covers
the years 1897 -1952.
So that's it for specific German Russian indexes, found on four web sites:
AHSGR, The Odessa Digital Library, Janet's German from Russia Research and
the Volga Germans web site. This is a pretty impressive list.
Now lets move onto general passenger ship list sites that are helpful to
the Germans from Russia researcher. There are three of them: Ellis Island,
Hamburg Ship lists and Galveston. Don't waste your time on the excellent
Rootsweb Immigrant Ship Transcriber Guild (ITSG) since most of the ship
lists they have transcribed were from before 1870. And since Germans from
Russia did not start immigrating until the 1870's, its not much help for
our research.
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ELLIS ISLAND ONLINE
Many of you already know about this site, Ellis Island Online has ship
lists entering Ellis Island from 1892-1924. You must register to use
this site but it is free to use. This massive site has a searchable
index and actual scans or photos of the ship lists you can look at
and order online. A scan is essentially the same thing as a
photocopy but it is not stored on paper, it is electronic. Since
there are often so many errors in ship list indexes, it is helpful
to be able to look at the scan of the original list. And the best
part is you can order a printed copy of a ship list for $25 or $35
per page depending on the size.
As fabulous as this site is, there can be problems and limitations with
it but there are ways to get around it. Again my critique in no way
reflects on the marvelous job the volunteers have done, we are very
fortunate to have this resource. A limitation with this site is the
search. The search choices start with just the first name, last name
and gender. It very cumbersome and slow to narrow the search, say to
a certain year range and ship name. The site does offer alternate
spellings and close matches but these are not that helpful. There
is no wildcard, soundex or beginning of a word search. One occasional
problem with the site is that the ship list you find named in the index
does not link to the correct scan of the ship list. For example the ship
list index indicates the ship is the SS Patricia but when you click on
the link to see the scan, it takes you to the SS Phoenicia. It is very
frustrating when you find someone in the index, and you want to view
all the details in the ship list. No matter how many times you try,
it always takes you to the wrong scan.
SEARCHING
THE ELLIS ISLAND DATABASE IN ONE STEP
These two problems have been solved with Steve P. Morse's site called
Searching the Ellis Island Database in One Step which connect
to the Ellis Island database. This site may look plain Jane, but it
is very powerful and overcomes the limitations of the Ellis Island site.
Lets say you're trying to find missing ship list that is not correctly
linked to the regular Ellis Island site. Or say you cannot even find
your ancestors in the index, but you know the name of the ship and the
date. Well on this alternate site there is a button called Missing
Manifests. If you click on it will take you to all the rolls of
microfilm for Ellis Island from 1892 -1924. You can advance frame
by frame, or 100 frames at a time and you can change magnification.
With a little patience you can find that ship lists missing on the
Ellis Island site.
The other really useful feature of this site is its search capabilities.
Lets say you know a family came through Ellis Island but you cannot
find them, their name must be misspelled. You know the approximate
year and the names of some family member. You can set all your search
criteria at once in the beginning. For example you could list the
first name, just the beginning of the surname, year range as well
as departure from certain ports. Often just being able to use the
beginning of a surname can lead to the correct person. You can even
get the surname down to 1 or 2 letters, while narrowing the search
in other ways. In other words, be creative. If they came through
Ellis Island, you should be able to find them because of this very
flexible search on the this site. I have had people email me saying
how they were able to find their ancestors using this site, even
thought they had searched the Ellis Island site previously.
Remember this Searching the Ellis Island Database in One Step
accesses the same information contained in the Ellis Island site it
just offers an alternative way to search.
HAMBURG
- LINK TO YOUR ROOTS
Hamburg departure ship lists are indexed online for the years
1890-1906. They plan on adding years up to 1914. The search
function there does allow for wild card characters so you don't have
a perfect match you might still find who you are searching for. If you
find a match in the index, it will just list the surname, first name,
state of origin, marital status, birth year, destination. In order to
find out what ship they were on you need to order a print out from them.
1-3 records costs $20, 4-10 records cost $30. These Hamburg departure
lists usually have pretty decent handwriting so the misspellings might
not be as extensive here as at some of the arrival ports. There are a
few ships going to Argentina in this index also.
GALVESTON
IMMIGRATION DATABASE AT THE TEXAS SEAPORT MUSEUM
Many Germans from Russia who were going to Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma
came through the port of Galveston, TX. Ship list are missing between the
years 1871 and 1894. But the ones that are available have been put online.
You must register on this site to use it. You can search by last name,
first name or ship name. You can search by just the first 3 characters
of a name. Most of the immigrants arriving at that port were going
somewhere in TX. But if they were going to CO, probably 80% were Germans
from Russia and there are a lot in their database going to Sugar City,
CO around 1905. About half of the immigrants going to OK and KS were GRs
also. A few GRs heading to Washington, California and Oregon came through
this port, but not too many. You can identify the Germans from Russia in
this index by the location or state they were going to, by their country
of origin was Russia and their name did not sound Russian. The ships our
Germans from Russia came on to Galveston, mostly appeared to be from
Bremen and the shipping line was North German Lloyd. The ship name match
those name traveling from Bremen to Baltimore, such as the SS Hannover,
Koln, Frankfurt, Breslau and Brandenburg. If you search by one of these
ship names only (no first name, no surname), you will find many Germans
from Russia listed, particularly those going to Colorado. This is a major
port for Germans from Russia going to those states.
WHAT'S STILL MISSING
Well if we can find nearly 60% of the Germans from Russia passenger ship
lists on the internet, where is the missing 40%?
Mainly the ports of Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia are missing. Don't
automatically assume your Germans from Russia came through Ellis Island,
or even a U.S. port. Of those 3, the most Germans from Russia may have
come through Baltimore. Smaller ports are missing, such as Detroit and
others.
Also, the earlier years, from the 1870s to about 1892 are missing from
the internet. Many AHSGR indexes help to fill that gap. Fortunately the
vast majority of Germans from Russia came after 1892. Also for Canada,
the ship list indexes are totally absent up to 1900, the start of George
Dorscher's indexes at the Odessa Digital Library. So for these instances
you have to resort to the slower method, of renting the microfilms and
going through them at a Family History Center.
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