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.
 |
| 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment