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I've been on WikiTree for a little over a week, and I've gotta say, it's a difficult learning curve.

One thing I'm not clear about is how to find source materials? For example, an ancestor came from Germany to the U.S. in the mid-1800s. Is there a way for me to search his name that would turn up immigration records? Or do I do a separate search for immigration records and plug what I find into his profile?

Comments

Welcome to WikiTree Raymond.

Answer 1

Hi Raymond ... and WELCOME to WikiTree!

I'm involved with the Holocaust project here and am very often searching for immigration records of people who traveled from Germany to the US, although at a later time than you are interested in.

The first place I look is at:  https://familysearch.org/search where I generally start with first and last names.  If there are a lot of records, then I will click "Type" on the left side and check the box for immigration.  If I want more filtering, I might enter a range of 2 or 3 years around the person's birth year on the left side.  You can see some of the information that is in the record there and, in most cases, there is a link to the site where the original immigration record can be displayed.

Although many immigration records located at http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org (which is the Ellis Island website) can be found at family search (the first link here) I sometimes find records there that are not at family search.

Good Luck with your search and please feel free to ask anything here - help is only a few keystrokes away!

Answer 2

Ellis Island opened in 1892. Before that (from about 1820 on) immigrants arrived at Castle Garden, their website is http://www.castlegarden.org/

As for passanger lists: the 2 main ports for emigrants from Germany were Bremen and Hamburg. The Bremen lists are almost all destroyed, the Hamburg lists starting from 1850 on are on ancestry.com.

Comments

Thank you. I was aware of Castle Garden. I just wondered if I can search from within WikiTree, and it appears the answer is no. That's OK -- I just wanted to be sure which resources were available through this site.