A needle in a haystack?

[livia]

Hi

I'm originally from Northern Ireland and it's very difficult to get geneology details going back to the 19th century - a lot of this is due to the burning down of records and the fact that the only church with good records was the established Anglican church.
So I guess my query is whether there is any way of finding out if a family member ever travelled to the USA based on US immigration records eg: would a record show where someone came from in Ireland?

I've always wondered if any of my ancestors were involved in the civil war but reach a dead end on my geneology searches at around 1900.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[AndyHall]

Immigration (and other records) do sometimes include the county from which the person immigrated. It's very hard (in my limited experience), though, to positively document the immigration of someone with a common name and without a fairly precise window of time when they traveled.

 

[101combatvet]

Hi

I'm originally from Northern Ireland and it's very difficult to get geneology details going back to the 19th century - a lot of this is due to the burning down of records and the fact that the only church with good records was the established Anglican church.
So I guess my query is whether there is any way of finding out if a family member ever travelled to the USA based on US immigration records eg: would a record show where someone came from in Ireland?

I've always wondered if any of my ancestors were involved in the civil war but reach a dead end on my geneology searches at around 1900.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Some of my family records were found in a data base at Ellis Island, but you don't have to travel there.

http://search.ancestry.com/search/category.aspx?cat=40

 

[Brendan]

I've been trying to trace my family tree back to Ireland (Northern Ireland and parts unknown) and I've also had a lot of trouble.

If you're wondering whether an ancestor went to the US, served in the Civil War, and then returned to Ireland (or died in the war, leaving behind his next-of-kin in Ireland), one good place to search would be the US pension records. You could start by checking the free pension index via FamilySearch. This would indicate the residence of the pension recipient, so it might give the parish or even townland in Ireland. Fold3 and Ancestry.com have the actual images of the index files, and Fold3 also has more detailed records from widow and mothers' pensions.

Online archives of passenger lists can be great resources for finding immigrant ancestors. The Ellis Island manifests 101combatvet recommended are fantastic for 20th century immigrant data, but for the 19th century or before, it's a bit of a crapshoot. I would also recommend the US passport applications on ancestry.com. You might find a relative there who immigrated to the US but then applied for a passport to go back to Ireland to visit. These records often have a ton of good info: date and place of birth, where and whom they're visiting, date of naturalization, place of residence in the US, and often even a photo of the applicant. If you think an ancestor might have lived in the New York City area in the 19th century, the NY Emigrant Savings Bank records can be a treasure trove. They often contain the parish (or at least county) a person was from, year of immigration, name of the ship (which can be used to find them on a manifest), address in NY, etc.

Any idea of names, dates, or immigration locations of any possible emigrant ancestors of yours? There are some other records out there specific to US states and narrower time frames I could recommend as well.

 

[livia]

Fantastic - thanks for all this info. Think I'll be a busy girl