German immigration: Ports of entry
Philadelphia was the most frequent port of entry for German immigrants during the colonial period
German immigration port of entry
Passenger Departure Lists of German Emigrants, 1709-1914
Bremen Passenger Departure Lists
Bremen – Passengerlists, 1920 -1930 – The “Ordiance Concerning the Emigration Traveling on Domestic or Foreign Ships” from 1832 in Bremen was the first state law with the purpose to protect emigrants. Among other things it required that the shipowners must maintain passenger lists. In 1851 the Bremen Chamber of Commerce established the “Nachweisungsbureau für Auswanderer” (the Information Office for Emigrants), where the ship captains had to deliver their lists. The rules and regulations of the ´Nachweisungsbureau´ considerably improved the quality of both the stay at Bremen prior to the sailing plus the seaworthiness of the ships. Unfortunately, all lists from 1875 – 1908 older than 3 years were destroyed due to lack of space in the Bremen Archives. With the exception of 3017 passenger lists for the years 1920 – 1939 all other lists were lost in World War II.These saved lists had been stowed away in a salt mine at Bernburg an der Saale in 1942 together with other archives for the purpose of protection, and were transferred into the custody of Moscow Archives at the end of WW II. In 1987 and 1990 those lists were given back to the Bremen Chamber of Commerce.
A Project with the Bremen Chamber of Commerce and the Bremen Staatsarchiv. You see here a list of all destination harbours where passages from Bremen were called at. A click on a destination leads to a list of all passages to this harbour. If only one passage is available, the link lead directly to the transcripted passengerlist.
Bremen Passenger Departure Lists, 1904-1914. This Collection will include records from 1904 to 1914.
This is a collection of handwritten cards covering the information of over 8,800 passengers. This card file was created by the Deutsches Ausland-Institut from Bremen passenger ship lists sometime between WWI and WWII. When the allies occupied Germany at the end of WWII, the Institute was closed and later re-opened as the Institut für Austlandsbeziehungen. These records, created by the Deutsches Ausland-Institut, were subsequently transferred to the Bundesarchiv. This name index includes approximately 8,800 individual emigrants. The cards appear to have been in good condition when they were microfilmed in 1988. The index was created to facilitate access to the information in the Bremen passenger lists. It was created by the Deutsches Ausland-Institut, who was interested in documenting German groups outside of Germany.The information is pretty reliable; however, as this index has been derived from the actual passenger lists, errors may have occurred during the indexing process.
Bremen Schiffslisten – List of Passengers on board in Bremen 1847-1867 and 1907-1914 – The Immigrant Ancestors Project, sponsored by the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University, uses emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants in their native countries, since this information is often omitted in many port records and naturalization documents of the destination countries. On this website we can find records of more than 107,000 migrants, who left Bremen to New York, based on passenger arrival lists (1847-1867) and more than 44,000 records of migrants, based on German departures records (1907 – 08, 1913-14).
Hamburg Passenger Departure Lists
Hamburg Passenger List – 1872 – In 1993 the Family History Library staff and missionaries made an index to the Hamburg Passenger Lists for the year 1872, supervised by Sonja Nishimoto. This was one of the years with especially high number of German emigrants leaving. Indexing the passenger lists for 1872 was a trial project to see how much time and effort it would take. Although they finished the project, they decided not to continue the project at that time.
The Hamburg Passenger Departure Lists 1850-1934 – A large number of German emigrants left from the German ports of Bremen and Hamburg (as well as other European ports). Most of the Bremen passenger departure records were destroyed. But the Hamburg lists survive – they are available online at Ancestry, and on microfilm from the Family History Library, which means they can be ordered from many local Family History Centers (although there may be restrictions on ordering these records in Europe).
Hamburg Passenger Lists Research Outline – Using the Passenger Lists and Indexes. It explains how to use the indexes and the lists themselves.
Hamburg Passenger Lists 1850-1934 – Online at Ancestry (requires payment) the years 1877-1914 have been indexed so far – digitized images of the passenger lists are available online for 1850-1934 (except the time frames noted above)