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Beginning Family History - Shipping Record Links

You may find the following links useful in your research.

SHIPPING RECORDS LINKS

Migration denotes the movement of human beings from one locality to another, often over large distances and in large groups. Since the beginning, human beings have moved from place to place following resources such as food and water and to find safe secure places to raise families. In this way we have, over thousands of years, populated almost every continent on earth.
This list is structured to give you an introduction to a range of resources concerned with shipping and migration. It is by no means exhaustive. Some background information is provided for each category. Treat these lists as a starting point. There are literally hundreds of web-sites concerned with matters relating to human migration, ships and shipping records and related matters.

GENERAL SHIPPING WEB-SITES WITH MUTLIPLE RESOURCES AND LINKS:

The Ships List
Fantastic shipping records from all over the globe. The list was begun in 1999. It includes American, Canadian, Australian, German, Irish passenger lists, extensive lists of ships and often images of the ships themselves and much, much more.
Cyndi’s Lists Central Index for Shipping and Passengers
This is the gateway to a broad resource.

Olive Tree Shipping Lists

Olive Tree Passenger Lists

These are brilliant for North American and Canadian Records.
Etc…

Pilgrim Shipping Lists by Date

Over 7100 families and 290 ships.

States where the ships sailed from and where they arrived.

Passenger Lists to USA and Canada

Thrilled to find this site! Set up by Lorine in 1996 and has more than 1900 pages of material. This site has extensive shipping and passenger lists and is well indexed by country of origin, religious refugee group as well as links to naturalization records, census records and a whole lot more.

Ships Lists On-line

Great resource for finding passengers on ships by ports of arrival in USA and Canada.

Family History Centre Shipping Record Links: International

This is an Australian Site. It is a great Resource for Australian, English (including records going back to 1330!), Germany (Bremen passenger lists), Canada, New Zealand, USA and World P&O lists. Naval and military passenger list records here are excellent.

THE GREAT ERA OF MIGRATION: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS TO TODAY.

When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New world of America in 1492 it began a new era of European migration over the next five centuries. Once revealed to Europe, a race began to settle and claim these new lands between the three great European powers of that time; the Spanish, French and English. Researching these early records can be challenging and are not always available. Mostly the records that do exist are held in the ORIGIN countries and language of the migrants.

SHIPPING RECORDS FROM THE AMERICAN COLONIAL PERIOD: 1492-1775
THE SPANISH IN AMERICA 1492-1832

The Spanish settled throughout south America, the Caribbean and vast sections of North America; Florida, Mexico, Pacific Coastal regions and the South west. Driven by a desire to find gold Spanish Conquistadors claimed land for the monarchy and sought to convert the New World to the Catholic faith. This vast area was called New Spain. It is estimated that between 1492 and 1832, a total of 18.6 million Spaniards settled in the Americas. To this day about 41 million people speak Spanish as their native language un the United States.
Spanish records are held:

The Archive General Indias in Seville, Spain
This is a repository with documents related to the Spanish Colonial Period. These documents often include the birth place of each individual on record.
Informaciones de Meritos y services de los Descubridores, Conquistadores. (Information on Merit and Services of the Discoverers and Conquerers)
These records are from the earliest period. These are documents of the ships and passengers who sailed to the colonies in the early 1500s.
Cassa de Contratacion de las Indias. (House of Contracts of the Indies)
This holds excellent documentation of passenger lists for ships sailing to the American colonies between 1509-1701. It also contains petitions and licences for those seeking permission to emigrate from 1534-1790.
A digital index of Casa de Contratacion de las Indias records as well as linked digital images are available on line through

Archives Espanoles en red
Copies of these ship passenger lists are also available at the Family History Library in Utah.
Catalogo de Pasajeros a las Indias Durante los Siglos XVI, XVII, XVIII (Catalog of Passengers to the Indies during the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries) Sevilla: SN., 1940- (FHL book 946 W2sa; microfilms 0277577-0277578)

THE FRENCH IN COLONIAL AMERICA 1534-1803

French migration to the New world led to a strong presence in North America, particularly along the Mississippi River, in Canada and the Ohio River Valley. The French controlled area was known as “New France” and it stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. Economic opportunity attracted these migrants, great wealth could be made from hunting and trapping furs. Descendants of these French migrants still live in the Midwest and Louisiana and in New York and New England. They are often of French Canadian, Cajun or Louisiana Creole descent. French is still the fourth most spoken language in USA. Large numbers of French fought in the Civil War on the Union side.
Established in 1534 New France was cessated to Spain and England in 1763. There had been three main colonies; Canada, Arcadia and Newfoundland (Plaisance) and Louisiana. In 1800 Spain returned a portion of Louisiana to France under a secret treaty of san ildefenso. Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the United States in 1803 in the Louisiana purchase- this permanently ended French colonial efforts in North America. Small pockets of French speakers still exist in USA and Canada has institutionalised bilingualism.
Unfortunately there are few emigration records from France. There are some helpful Canadian records of French immigrants into Quebec from 1632 to 1713.
Le Havre Records
From the 1800s most French and German emigrants left from le havre. The records from this departure port are called passenger lists. A French genealogical society has discovered a 100 year old card file of 45,000 passengers, 25,000 sailors and 5000 retirees at le Havre from 1780 until 1840. No body knows how comprehensive it is. The records usually show name, maiden surname of the spouse (including cross-references) birth date or age, birthplace, parents, date and place of embarkation and debarkation, and for French ships, the vessel’s name. researchers may send written enquiries to:
Liste de Passagers
Groupement Genealogique et de Seine-maritime
B.P. 80
76050 Le Havre Cedex
FRANCE
Send correctly spelt given name and surname of passenger, a self-addressed envelope, and three international reply coupons (purchased at large post-offices), stating your email address on a cover letter.
Cajun and Creole Links on Family History Library

American French Genealogical Society at Rhode Island which was formed in 1978

University of Louisiana: French Colonial Records 1732-1819

French Colonial Records: New Orleans

Collections by Time>1683-1763

HUGUENOTS, 1700

The Huguenots were French Protestants who had been persecuted by the French Catholic monarchs for many years. Huguenots fled France to many parts of the world including America. They arrived and settled at King William parish in 1700.
Olive Tree Huguenots Shipping records to South Africa but also America

ENGLISH RECORDS: AMERICAN COLONIAL PERIOD 1585-1775

English migration to America began in the 1600s during the Elizabethan Era. They founded colonies mostly on the east coast of North America.
Walter Raleigh founded Virginia in 1585 sending several ship loads of colonists to Roanoke Island. Jamestown in Virginia was founded in 1607.
Ancestry.com has a US and Canada Passenger and Immigration List Index, 1500s-1900s and has 4,712,000 individuals documented.
Ancestry link.

ENGLISH RELIGIOUS REFUGEES: AMERICAN COLONIAL PERIOD; 1620-1775

Many waves of English migration to America were religious refugees. Communities of religious dissenters who were in danger of persecution.
PILGRIMS: 1620, Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachuettes.
King James gave permission for 102 immigrants who had been living in Holland to settle in America.
Pilgrim Ships Lists Early 1600s Over 7100 Families and 290 Ships by Ann Stephens:

PURITANS: 1630-1642; THE GREAT MIGRATION

In 1730 17 ships left from England for America carrying another group of dissenters who had rejected the church of England. The English Civil War began in 1842 between the Puritan rebels and the Royalists- which as ultimately won by the Puritans who beheaded Charles I. The period leading up to the Civil War has become known as the Great Migration with over 200 ships and somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 passengers who mostly settled in Boston and Salem.

The Winthrop Society
This web-site holds records for ships and passengers who migrated between 1633 and 1635- which was the peak of the migration.

Wiki Tree: great Migrations Ships;

QUAKERS: 1675-1725 THE Society of Friends.

Another dissenting religious group who sought the freedom to practice their faith in America were the Quakers. This group rejected social hierarchy and were persecuted in England. In 1675 Quakers began to arrive in Salem in West Jersey and Delaware Bay. By 1750 Quakers made up the third largest religious group in America. In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn 40,000 acres to found a Quaker State which was named Pennsylvania after Penn.
Olive Tree the magnificent has some links for Quaker Shipping and Population Lists

SCOTTISH, SCOTCH-IRISH, AND NORTHERN ENGLISH EMIGRATION 1715-1775

Many of these immigrants came from Northern Ireland and were descendants of Scottish protestants who came to Ireland during James I and then again during Cromwell’s time, hence they were known as Scotch Irish. Amongst them were also English from the northern counties who were suffering crop failures in 1727, 1740 and 1770. These immigrants moved into the rugged mountainous areas of the western frontier regions of the Eastern colonies. Migration peaked between 1750 and the early 1770s. 14,200 people arrived between 1750 and 1759, 21,200 between 1760 and 1769 and another 13,200 came in the period 1770-1775 at the outbreak of the War of Independence.
Some migration records can be found on Electric Scotland web-site:

Scotch Irish emigration to America on the Rootsweb site
has information about the history and time periods.

RELIGIOUS REFUGEES FROM OTHER PARTS OF EUROPE DURING THE COLONIAL ERA

MANONITES AND ARMISH FROM GERMANY AND HOLLAND, FROM 1683

In 1683 13 Menonite families founded German Town, Philidelphia. Their faith was developed in Switzerland and Germany and they were attracted by America’s stand for religious freedom. In 1737 another 21 Amish families arrived and then over the next 3 decades another 100 families also arrived.
Mennonites to USA and Canada
http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/menntocan.shtml
There is some interesting information in this book Amish Society
http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/menntocan.shtml

ENGLISH EMIGRATON TO AMERICA COLONIAL PERIOD: HOSTAGES

BRITISH CONVICTS TO AMERICA: CONVICTS: 1670-1775

From as early as 1670, England began to send convicted felons to the West Indies and America to use as labour to found the colonies. England sent 52,000 convicts there. Most had committed capital crimes and they were given the choice to live and become virtual slaves in the colonies. Their sentences tended to be set at either 7 or 14 years to make them attractive cheap labour for the free settlers.

BOND SERVANTS – 1630s-1775

Indentured servitude was very common in British North America. It was a way for poor English, Irish and Scots to emigrate. They exchanged their labour for the cost of their passage to the New World. Some estimate that between half and one third of all emigrants to America between 1630 and the War of Independence in 1775 arrived as bond servants. Once their term of bondage was served they were free to work for themselves or for someone of their choosing. A large percentage were based in Virginia north to New Jersey. “Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[3] About 75% of these were under the age of 25. The age of adulthood for men was 24 years (not 21); those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[4] Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labour once in America."[5]”
White Slaves and Bond servants in the Plantations

AMERICAN COLONIAL TRANSPORTATION AND BOND SERVANT RECORDS:

PETER WILSON OLDHAM

The best place to find records for individuals who were either convicts or bond servants are in the works of Peter Wilson Oldham. Oldham originally worked for the British Foreign Office and then for the British record Office accessing and documenting the records held there. He became the most significant contributory scholar of these two groups of British emigrants to America in the Colonial period. He wrote 30 books in total. Two of them are seminal works; “Bonded Passengers to America; published in 1983 and the “Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage 1614-1775” covering over 50,000 men, women and children who came to America in servitude.
Ancestry.com has indexed these records at
Bonded Passengers to America:

You may also find British Criminal Assize Court records useful to search.

Also The Old Bailey records

Limit your search and use the word “Transportation” in your search.

ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE. 1600-1776

From Wikipedia: Slavery in the Colonial United States
“The origins of slavery in the colonial United States (1600–1776) are complex and there are several theories that have been proposed to explain the trade. It was largely tied to European colonies' need for labor, especially plantation agricultural labor in their Caribbean sugar colonies operated by Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic.
Most slaves who were brought or kidnapped to the Thirteen British colonies which later became the Eastern seaboard of the United States were imported from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa. They arrived in the Caribbean predominantly as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. Although slavery of indigenous peoples also occurred in the North American colonies, by comparison of scale it was less important. Slave status for Africans usually became hereditary.[1][2]
While they knew about Spanish and Portuguese slave trading, the British did not conceive of using slave labor in the Americas until the 17th century.[3] British travelers were fascinated by the dark-skinned people they found in West Africa, and sought to create mythologies that situated these new human beings in their view of the cosmos.[4]
The first Africans to arrive in England came voluntarily with John Lok (an ancestor of the famous philosopher John Locke) in 1555. Lok intended to teach them English in order to facilitate trading of material goods.[5] This model gave way to a slave trade initiated by John Hawkins, who captured 300 Africans and sold them to the Spanish.[6] Blacks in England were subordinate but did not have the legal status of chattel slaves.[7]
In 1607, England established Jamestown as its first permanent colony on the North American continent.[8] Tobacco became the chief crop of the colony, due to the efforts of John Rolfe in 1611. Once it became clear that tobacco was going to drive the Jamestown colony, more labor was needed. The British aristocracy needed to find a labor force to work on its plantations in the Americas. The major possibilities were indentured servants from Britain, Native Americans, and West Africans.[9] During this time, off the North American mainland, Barbados became an English Colony in 1624 and the Caribbean's Jamaica in 1655. These and other Caribbean colonies became the center of wealth and the focus of the slave trade for the growing English empire.[10]
Towards indigenous Americans, the English entertained two lines of thought simultaneously. Because these people were lighter skinned, they were seen as more European and therefore as candidates for civilization. At the same time, because they were occupying the land desired by the colonial powers, they were from the beginning, targets of a potential military campaign.[11]
At first, indentured servants were used as the needed labor.[12] These servants provided up to seven years of service in exchange for having their trip to Jamestown paid for by someone in Jamestown. Once the seven years was over, the indentured servant was free to live in Jamestown as a regular citizen. However, colonists began to see indentured servants as too costly, and in 1619, Dutch traders brought the first African slaves to Jamestown, who nonetheless were in North America at first generally treated as indentured servants.[13]
Several Colonial colleges, held enslaved people—and relied on captives to operate.”[14]”
You can see from these exerts that there was a relationship between the existence of indentured, bond servants and the concept of slavery.
American national archives records on African American History

American Ancestors Guide to researching African American History

Family Search Quick Guide to African American Research

Slave Voyages

British National Archives on the Atlantic Slave Trade Records

Slave Ship Journals and Other Shipping information

SLAVERY IN AMERICA POST-COLONIAL PERIOD 1776-1865.

After the establishment of the United States of America the International Slave Trade was banned in all states but South Carolina. Slave trading and “ownership” continued until the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
Slave Ship Manifests Files at New Orleans 1807-1860

AUSTRALIAN CONVICT ERA 1787-1868

After the war of Independence the British needed another colony to take it’s ever growing population of convicted criminals. A perfect storm of concurrent crisis caused a growth in impoverished people. The industrial Revolution superseded many existing cottage industries, land clearances by large land holders left former tenants homeless and without subsistence, and economic and political policies also gave rise to crowding filthy cities, and desperate people trying to survive with very little relief. British gaols were overflowing and many prisoners were held in old Hulks at places like Woolwich and Plymouth. James Cook placed the British flag in Australian soil in 1770 and in 1785 Britain seriously began to prepare for Transportation to create a new colony in new South Wales.
Between 1787 and 1868 England sent 450 convict ships to Australia carrying an estimated 160,000 convicts from British Isles and the British Colonies. From the time they entered their convict transport vessel, each convict was identified their name and the name of the ship on which they sailed and the year it arrived. In this way the convict’s experience as a convict was intrinsically tied with their passage to Australia. In the early days this could take 10 months at sea.
A Great web-site to start researching your convicts is:

Convict Records

You can search on this web-site by the name of the convict or by the ship name. See out videos on Transportation to Australia and the dedicated section here on the web-site for many links to information.
See the “convict” tab and video for more information on Australian Convicts.

EMPIRE: SHIPPING RECORDS

POST WORLD WAR TWO EMIGRATION:

TO AUSTRALIA

Migration heritage NSW: 1945-1965

National Library of Australia

Public Records Office of Victoria, Post WWII British Emigration Records

TO USA

Ellis Island History

Finding New York Passenger records 1827- 1957

Family Search Resources on American Immigration

OPPORTUNITY
CALIFORNIAN GOLD RUSH
AUSTRALIAN GOLD RUSH