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Sunday, December 6, 2009

Finding a Swedish Ancestor on a Ships Passenger List

Nancy's Question:
I have not been able to find my Swedish great grandmother on a ship from Liverpool, England, into New York. Sofia Johnson left Sweden and went to Hull, England, on the ship Romeo. She is on a passenger list dated 11 May 1883 (#2188? 3188? 1188?) With her are son Emil and daughter Swea. They came from Falkoping Sweden and were going to Rockford Illinois.

They would have arrived in Hull, England a few days after leaving the west coast of Sweden. I understand they took a train across England to Liverpool and boarded a ship there for New York. I have searched through the lists for mid-May and into June and have not found them.

Could you possibly find them in your collection of Liverpool to New York 1883 passenger lists?

Olive Tree Answer: Hello Nancy - AskOliveTree is not a lookup service. I try to help genealogists find their ancestors by suggesting avenues of research they may not be aware of. Occassionally I find an actual document of an ancestor a person is seeking but that is simply a bonus of my checking some of the facts researchers send me.

Also, any Liverpool to New York ships passenger lists that Olive Tree Genealogy has transcribed, are online (free) on my website where you are welcome to search for your names of interest.

You say you have looked on ships passenger lists through May and a little bit in June. I suggest you extend your search to the entire year. Your famikly may have stopped along the way to rest; they may have stopped to earn a little cash. They may have stayed with family or friends for several months before moving on.

I am not sure why you believe they arrived in New York. There were many ports of arrival available to them, including Canadian ports which were much cheaper than USA ones. The major ports, other than New York, were Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Baltimore Maryland, Boston Massachusetts and New Orleans Louisiana. There is a 5 step guide to finding your ancestor in Ships Passenger Lists you may want to check to for help finding lists for these other ports.

I would hunt for Emil's naturalization papers to see if any further clues are found there. Footnote.com has Naturalization Recordsicon from NARA. Ancestry.com also has Naturalization records as part of their World Archives Project

1 comment:

  1. As the query above is about some emigrants from the Falkoping area in Sweden I became intressted.

    This as I'm intressted in emigrants from that area. Some of them are up on the website Emigrant.se. Those and more emigrants and families of the both in the old country as the new one are in a database of emigrants from Falbygden which I working on. So far the number are up in 36 000 indiviuals.

    If any one search in that area I try to help out and in exchange I like to have info about the emigrant/-s.

    /Annelie J
    Falkoping, Sweden

    ReplyDelete