Ancestor's Town of Origin

At a recent meeting of the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society we heard Teresa Steinkamp McMillin talk about finding your ancestor's town of origin. She called this "the holy grail of genealogical research," because once you find that, you can research your family in their homeland, across the ocean.

But how to find the town of origin? Be thorough. Check, look, and search. Teresa gave some good ideas of places to look:

• Home sources. This encompasses many, many possibilities, some of which are Bibles, letters, diaries, certificates of all kinds (from births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, naturalizations), photos, etc.
• Immigration lists. After 1898, the last place of residence was listed on the passenger lists. After 1906 the passenger lists had two pages and the second page included town of birth.
• Emigration lists. Hamburg passenger lists give town of birth.
• Naturalization records. After 1906, the Declaration of Intent requested this information.
• Obituaries, especially in foreign newspapers
• County histories, usually for more prominent citizens.

Haven't found the town of birth yet? Don't give up. Teresa's mantra: There is no such thing as a brick wall!

Happy searching.
~Sonia

Passenger Lists

At our last Genealogy Writing Group we also talked about passenger lists, immigration, and finding the "holy grail" of genealogy: the home town or parish in the country of origin. I don't have any magic tricks for answering this question; usually finding immigration information is the result of lots of hard, diligent work.

But we can always use more tools in our toolbox, right? In our discussion we mentioned the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild website. The name pretty much says it all: the website is made up of transcribed passenger lists from immigrant ships. There is a search box or you can look by year through "volumes" for your immigrant's name.

I'm sure we will have additional posts regarding immigration. If you have any good immigration research sites you have used, let us know. And by all means, if you find someone on the passenger list, share your good news in the comment section. We'd love to hear about it!

~Sonia