Beginning a Pre-Immigration Genealogy Search

If you've completed your North American family tree and are ready to tackle an overseas search, the Passenger and immigration lists index edited by P. William Filby is a source you will want to look at. The original volume re-creates the passenger lists and naturalization records of about 300 sources from the 17th-19th centuries. The information in this index can tell you when and where your ancestor arrived in America, which can give you some good clues about the national origin of that person and where to look for pre-immigration records.

You can search this index by the last name of the person in your family that immigrated to America. Names are listed alphabetically. Each entry includes the following information as taken from the original passenger lists: age of the person at time of immigration, place of immigration, date of arrival, original source of information, and any accompanying passengers. Any accompanying passengers are cross-referenced.

It is a very comprehensive, well compiled, and organized work. The first volume was published in 1981, and there has been a supplement published every year since. Over the whole set, there are several million names of immigrants indexed.

Filby, P. W. & Meyer, M. K. (Eds.). (1981). Passenger and immigration lists index: A guide to published arrival records of about 500,000 passengers who came to the United States from 1538-1900. Detroit: Gale Research Company.