This data set contains
alphabetical listings of approximately individuals who arrived at Philadelphia
from foreign ports between 1800 and 1850.
Partly in an effort to alleviate overcrowding of passenger ships, Congress enacted
legislation (3 Stat. 489) on March 2, 1819 to regulate the transport of passengers
in ships arriving from foreign ports. As a provision of this act, masters of such
ships were required to submit a list of all passengers to the collector of customs
in the district in which the ship arrived.
The legislation also provided that the collector of customs submit quarterly passenger
list reports to the Secretary of State, who was, in turn, required to submit the
information to Congress. The information was then published in the form of Congressional
documents. A further Congressional act passed on May 7, 1874 repealed the legislative
provision requiring collectors to send copies of passenger lists to the Secretary
of State. Thereafter, collectors of customs were to send only statistical reports
on passenger arrivals to the Department of Treasury.
These passenger lists are important primary sources of arrival data for the vast
majority of immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century. With the
single exception of federal census records they are the largest, the most continuous,
and the most uniform body of records of the entire country.(Michael Tepper. "American
Passenger Arrival Records." Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc. 1993.
Page 64.)
The information collected in this data set was extracted from the National
Archives Microfilm Series M425, "Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 1800-1882." This microfilm series consists of baggage lists from
1800 through 1819 and original passenger lists from 1820 through 1882. Some later
baggage lists and copies of original lists have been inserted as substitutes for
missing or unreadable originals. While the entire microfilm series spans 108 rolls,
the information collected here covers rolls 1 through 71. It includes individuals
who arrived between January 1, 1800 and December 23, 1850. The information that
you can learn will help create a well-rounded picture of your ancestor's arrival
in America.
You may be able to find the following information about an ancestor:
• Gender
• Birthplace
• Age
• Occupation
• Country of origin
• Port of departure
• Port of arrival
• Date of arrival
• Destination
• National Archives microfilm roll number
• National Archives list number
• Name of ship (often the type of ship is noted as well)
• Family identification number
MORE ABOUT
THIS DATA SET
From this data set, you
can learn a great deal of valuable information about your immigrant ancestors.
You will find basic information about an individual on the Records tab in this
data set. To reach an individual's record, simply select the Records tab
on the right side of your screen. Type a name you are interested in and you will
find the following information:
Name — In this column you will find the individual's given name and
surname, as well as any titles that were included in the original index.
You should note that names of immigrants were often recorded as they were heard
and that many immigrants could not spell their own names. Thus, spelling variations
of names occur and members of the same family arriving at different times or places
may be found with different spellings.
You may have difficulty locating some names for the following
reasons:
• Some given names have been abbreviated. For example, "Robert"
may appear as "Robt," and "Elizabeth" as "Eliz."
• Some given names are misspelled, contain typos, or may be spelled unusually.
• Some given and middle names are truncated. Specifically, this happens when
the name, including the spaces between the given name, middle name, and last name,
is longer than twenty-three characters. For example, "McCormack, Annabelle
Margaret" would be listed as "McCormack, Annabelle Mar."
If you are unable to locate a particular given name and surname, try switching
the given name to an initial, abbreviation, or possible misspelling. If the surname
is not common, you may want to search only on the surname.
Age — This
column indicates the individual's age at the time of immigration. Please note
that some of the ages are followed by letters. An age appended by "h" was recorded
in hours, "d" was recorded in days, "w" was recorded in weeks, "m" was recorded
in months, and "y" was recorded in years. You can assume that an age without a
letter after it was recorded in years.
Date of Arrival — This is the date on which the individual arrived
in Philadelphia.
Port of Departure — This is the port from which the individual departed
(usually this is in their home country). Please note that occasionally, this information
was recorded in the native language of the departure port.
