Has this ever happened to you? You're searching for a person's immigration record to learn more details about them. But the only search result for your person is a page with a heading like "Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry".
Pages with this type of heading don't give you all the details you want. You need to see their original listing that can tell you:
- their age
- who they traveled with
- their hometown
- the relative they left behind
- their final destination
- who they're coming to join and where
- their height and the color of their eyes and hair
- if this is their first time in the country
- and more.
Whenever this happened to me, I had to search each page of the ship manifest for my person's name. Sometimes that's an awful lot of pages. But earlier this year a RootsTech webinar showed me the clue I'd been overlooking.
The detention page shows the page and line number for each person's original listing! Once you know what to look for, it's obvious. I'm embarrassed that I needed a webinar to point this out to me. Let's look at two types of headings you need to find.
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| Sometimes your search for an immigrant ancestor delivers their detention page. You need their original listing. Here's how to get from one to the other easily. |
1. The Manifest Heading
In 1913, Luigi Bruno arrived at Ellis Island in New York. The authorities detained him as an LPC—Likely Public Charge. I needed to find his original listing, so I went searching for his name on every page. But the answer to this search is on the detention page. Under the heading Manifest (which should have been the tip-off) it says Group 131, No. 8.
This means I need to look for the page with a large 131 written or stamped at the top, and then look at line 8 to find Luigi Bruno. And there he is! The detention page shows that he ate 4 breakfasts, 4 lunches, and 4 dinners, so they held him for 4 days. His original listing has a rubber stamp that says ADMITTED. It tells me:
- he's 17 years old
- his father is Marino Bruno
- he's heading to Clearfield, Pennsylvania, to join his cousin
- he comes from Sant'Angelo in Italy, and
- it's his first time in the United States.
This level of detail proves he is the same Luigi Bruno born in my great grandparents' hometown in 1896. I found his Italian birth record on the Antenati website.
And speaking of ship manifests:
2. The Ticket No. Heading
This example is specific to Japanese immigrants detained at Angel Island, San Francisco.
In 1929, Tatsu Kadoguchi arrived at the port of San Francisco. Authorities detained and released her on the same date. The reason is not given, but it may be that she's a woman waiting for her husband to claim her. Her detention sheet has a heading of Ticket No. with the entry "11 - 9". Each person on this detention page has a similar ticket number: 7 - 17, 7 - 18, 10 - 2, etc.
This number tells you which list and line number to look for. Tatsu's original manifest entry is on List 11, Line 9. Once again, you can look for the manifest page with a stamped or written number 11 at the top. Then look at line 9 to find the person.
Every immigrant in my family tree arrived at either New York or San Francisco. I took a fresh look through my collection of downloaded ship manifests. Every detention sheet has either the Manifest heading or the Ticket No. heading. How I didn't realize this on my own is a mystery.
I wanted to find more detention examples and different headings to share with you. So I asked Microsoft Copilot this U.S.-specific question:
I know that some passengers arriving at Ellis Island were detained for reasons including health problems and being a likely public charge. Passengers were also detained at the port of San Francisco. Which other ports were know to detain passengers in the early 1900s?
Copilot culled its answer from FamilySearch, GeneSearch, and the U.S. National Archives. It says New York and San Francisco were the main east and west coast detention centers. But other ports known to detain passengers were:
- Boston
- Baltimore
- Charleston
- Galveston
- Mobile
- New Orleans
- Philadelphia
- Seattle
- various Alaska and Mexican/Canadian border ports.
When it comes to Ellis Island ship manifests, the lists of detainees are always at the end of the collection. I spent time searching through manifests at many of the ports listed above as well as some non-U.S. ports. But I can't find any detention records.
If you've found detention records from other ports, please share an example with us. These special headings are an enormous time-saver when you're researching a detained immigrant.
I have utilized the "Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry" section of ship manifests in the way you described on a number of occasions with similar success.
ReplyDeleteI have found this section to be very useful for another reason. In many cases, names entered in the Special Inquiry section are printed or handwritten relatively neatly and sometimes even typed (!!). It can be quite a surprise to compare how the spelling of a name in the Special Inquiry section compares with the spelling of the same name entered by hand on the original manifest. When in doubt, I’ll often go with the spelling provided in the Special Inquiry section.
One result of this situation is that sometimes a passenger on a ship manifest can be entered in the Ancestry record collection under two different names: 1) The passenger name on the original manifest as transcribed by Ancestry and 2) the name for the same passenger as it appears in the Special Inquiry section. This can happen when the passenger name on the original manifest is very difficult to decipher and the Ancestry transcribers have to take their best shot at coming up with the correct spelling. Realizing this has helped me a couple of times.
I like the Special Inquiry section so much that I skim thru it for any manifest that I am reviewing and check for any names that I recognize. This can be done pretty quickly. I have found the Special Inquiry section usually covers about 1 to 5 pages.
Another section of a ship manifest that I have found useful to check is the “Record of Detained Aliens.” The Detained Aliens section typically appears at the end of the ship manifest just before the Special Inquiry section. I refer to the Detained Aliens section when a passenger’s entry in the original manifest is annotated or stamped “Admitted” or “Detained Alien” or something similar to that, or if the entire entry line is crossed out. If it turns out that the passenger in question appears in the Detained Aliens section you might be rewarded with 1) a more legible spelling for the passenger’s name, 2) the reason for the detention and 3) the name and relationship of the person to whom the the passenger was released (that person may differ from the person listed on the original manifest as who the passenger planned to join in the USA).
Yours is my “go to” genealogy blog! Thank you!
Keep in mind that the handwritten name was written when they boarded the ship in their own country—written by their countryman who spoke their language. The type detainee or special inquiry page was created in the country of arrival. It's possible that the typed variation could be wrong.
DeleteThank you for the clarification.
ReplyDeleteStephen Carfora