Free Search of Ellis Island/Port of New York Records

If you know that you have relatives that immigrated to the United States via Ellis Island/Port of New York, you can search the records free on  The Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation, Inc website.

Simply provide a first name and/or a last name of the passenger, the approximate year of birth and the gender to see if your relative was on one of the ships. If you don’t know if a relative came to the U.S. via this route, you can do a much broader search by just entering your family’s last name, choosing different years and leaving the gender as ‘any’. Then you can browse through the results to find leads.

The site also gives you the opportunity to search by ship, in case you don’t know any other information that makes the passenger search viable for you.

The site doesn’t just offer free searches, you can also purchase collector’s items to add to your genealogy project. You can also add your ancestors to memorials kept at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum by adding their face to The American Flag of Faces. You can also have your ancestor’s name inscribes on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, located at Ellis Island. If you haven’t made your way over to the site, do so now, you may find another piece of your family history puzzle.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/2229937579/)

August 14th, 2009 by Marcelina Hardy | Posted in Family Trees | (0)