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Friday, January 16, 2009

How do I find a website that disappeared?

cbrees wrote: A few years ago I found a website of Carl Boyer's Ship Passeneger Lists New York and New Jersey 1600-1825. It contained ships coming into New York from Belfast in 1802, listing the ship name, complete list of passengers, date of departure and arrival. I located my ancestral grandfather on one of these, George CUMING (or variation in spelling) from Newry, Down County, however he actually boarded the ship at Hamburg. I am unable to locate the NAME of that ship and now wish to locate the entire ship list, which is quite short, but have been unable to locate it anywhere online.

MY ANSWER: cbrees - Don't you hate when that happens? I'm not aware of any website ever putting Boyer's entire book online. So I did a search for you and found what you saw previously on Google Books.

The graphic of the page in the book shows that this is NOT a passenger list but a list of individuals who were naturalized in New York. It is titled "ALIENS NATURALIZED IN NEW YORK 1802-1814"

The record states "George Cummings; Newry; 34; Ireland; GB; Hamburgh; 29 Oct. 1802. ..." (GB = Great Britain)

If you read the first of the page online, there is an explanation of the record you are looking at. It's always a good idea to learn what it is you are reading - so that you don't confuse a naturalization date with an immigration date for example.

The date 1802 is the date the report was filed, not the date the person sailed. So we see that George came from Newry via Hamburg, was 34 years of age and filed for his naturalization papers in October 1802

At the time George was naturalized, it was not necessary to check to see if his memory was accurate, and no one verified his arrival on a ships list.

See the website Naturalization Records for more info and links to online naturalization records.

1 comment:

  1. If you literally need to find a website that disappeared, consider using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine - it is literally an archive of some sites that are no longer around.

    http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

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