Passenger Departure Records

The ancestors of most Americans were immigrants, and many immigrated in the late 19th or early 20th century through Ellis Island .  Since the publication of Passenger Manifests on the Ellis Island website, many Americans have found the Immigration Records of their ancestors.

However, the Passenger Manifests that document arrival in the United States are not the only records that document the immigration process .  For my grandfather, Kostanty Niedzialkowski, I was able to find his:

• Passenger Departure Manifest
• Passenger Arrival Manifest
• Certificate of Arrival
• Declaration of Intention (First Papers)
• Petition for Naturalization and Oath of Allegiance
• Certificate of Naturalization

Passenger Departure Lists are available from a number of different sources .  Perhaps the best known are the Hamburg Departure Lists, but others, such as the Holland-America Line Passenger Lists also provide important information about our ancestors.

The Passenger Lists of the Holland-America Line cover the years 1900-1940 and consist of two parts .  The Indexes are listed at the Family History Library (FHL) as the Passagiersregister .  According to the FHL online catalog, they list:

the passenger’s name, contract number, and departure with ship name and date.

Also according to the FHL online catalog, the Passenger Manifests themselves show:

the ship contract and agent contract number, passenger’s name, number of fares divided between full, half, and none, the price arrangement between different shipping companies, city where passage was booked and the destination, whether rail passage was booked, with booking number, number of tickets, class and price, company agent and place of agency where passage was booked, adult fare price, commissions paid to agents and place, net amount of prepaid fares, number and amount, reservation fee, subsequent payments in foreign adn/or Dutch currency, sea and rail passage agents, Dutch currency, totals for sea, European and American rail passage, and remarks.

The Departure Manifests of Konstanti Niedzialkoski have been uploaded so you can see them .  Unfortunately, much of the document is difficult to read .  I have indicated where Kostanti Niedzialkoski’s name appears with an arrow to the left of the document .  I can’t quite read the city where he booked passage .  It looks to me like “Gllowo” or “Zllowo” .  A number of passengers on this voyage booked their passage there .  One thing that I can read is that he was traveling to Worcester, Massachusetts .  He sailed in third class (steerage) on the S.S. Ryndam, departing Rotterdam on 14 May 1910 .  Tomorrow – Konstanti arrives in New York.

TSS Rijndam

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen J. Danko