Our lesson this week was based on a recent experience I had regarding one of my grandfathers. Iver William Nelson was about 9 years old when he emigrated from Denmark with his family about 1903. I had known the basics of their story for many years, based to a large degree on the story told by his youngest sister Camille to my uncle. I have a copy of that story.
Basically, the father came to Iowa in 1903 to see if it would be a place to bring his family. He had gone with enough money to return to Denmark, if it didn't turn out to be what he wanted. He decided to stay, so sent for his two oldest sons to come to help him get a home ready. He then sent for his wife and the six youngest children, including my grandfather. Finally, the two oldest sisters came. There are a number of stories about their experiences.
For several years, I have searched for the passenger lists that would have been used to let them enter the United States. I had found the father, the two oldest boys, and one of the daughters. However, I had never been able to find my grandfather, his mother, and five other siblings, who all traveled together.
While updating a tree on Ancestry.com, I discovered a new hint on my grandfather's page. It directed me to a website that contained something called the DDD Emigration List. As I looked at it, I could see that the whole family was listed, individually, but all in sequence. It appeared that it was a list of people who were leaving Denmark and had bought tickets. It was with the Copenhagen police. Name, age, where born, where resided, final destination, date, and name of ship were some of the information listed. I knew I had the right family, as names and ages all matched, plus they were going to Ogden, Iowa. There was not a way to print just the portion of the list that I wanted, so I did a copy and paste and saved it to Word. I also copied and pasted the name of the site so I could find it again, if needed.
My one big questions was about the name of the ship. It said Indirekte and I was almost positive that meant that they were not sailing directly from Denmark, but were taking another ship to reach another port, most likely Liverpool. I wanted to be sure, so I turned to my FaceBook page. One of the groups I follow is Danish American Genealogy. I posted a brief description of what I found, what I thought, and asked if I was correct. I got a ton of responses. Yes, it meant that they had sailed from Denmark, but did not go directly to the US.
I also learned that this was a registry that was required. Every one who purchased a ticket from an agent was listed with the Copenhagen police. The purpose was to keep the agents honest. There had been a problem previously with agents taking the money for tickets and then disappearing. The responses also indicated that the people did not necessarily sail from Copenhagen, but could have left from any Danish port. Someone asked where my people lived and I told them Herning, which is up in the peninsula area and quite a long ways from Copenhagen. That meant they probably traveled from Herning to Esbjerg and then sailed from there. Most likely, they would have sailed to Hull, which is near Liverpool. Several people gave me links to sites that covered lots of things related to my questions.
Eventually, since I now had exact information, I found them on the passenger lists at Ellis Island and Ancestry.com. I posted my success and several people posted more links and information, including about the ship they sailed on. There was even a link to another site that might help me find them on the ship that sailed from Esbjerg to Hull. Tons of information and tons of help. I follow a lot of genealogy pages and skim through them quickly, but sometimes I find a ton of information that I would have spent hours looking for. FB can be a great tool.
Following are some of the things we talked about in class, related to my story:
1 - Creating a GEDCOM file (I had created a new tree on Ancestry.com from a GEDCOM that I made from RootsMagic. That is what started this whole thing.)
From RootsMagic: File, Export, click what you want to be in the GEDCOM file, OK, Name and Save to your hard drive. You can then upload the file to a website or send it to someone else.
To create a new tree on Ancestry.com using a GEDcom: Trees, Create & Manage Trees, bottom of page to Upload a GEDCOM file, Browse to found the file on your hard drive, give it a name and description, accept Submission Agreement, Upload.
To create a new tree on Ancestry.com from FamilySearch: Trees, Import Tree from FamilySearch, sign in to FS, name the tree, indicate whether you want it public or private, Save. This GEDCOM will cover only five or six generations.
2 - ellisisland.org - (I went here to try to find the name of the ship and the date of arrival in NY.) This is a free website and has the names of the people who passed through Ellis Island. You can search by name, but since so many names are so common, you may get dozens of pages to look through. After trying several of the names from the DDD Emigration, I found one of the children. I could see the passenger list and the family was all there. I was also able to see the name of the ship and the date they arrived in New York. Because the names, ages, final destination, and person who would meet them all matched what I already knew, I am confident it is the correct family. I printed a copy of the passenger list, although it does not let you print a large copy. You can order one, if you want.
3 - Searching Ancestry.com for the passenger list - I had not been able to find the list based on the names, but now that I had the ship name and date of arrival, I was able to search differently. Search, Immigration & Travel, Passenger Lists (on the right, under Narrow by Category), New York Passenger Lists (under Featured Data Collections), and then under Browse the Collection, choose Date, year, month, day, ship. The passenger list for that ship that arrived in New York on that date will appear. I then had to look through each page until I found the family. To print the page, go to the tools symbol on right side (looks kind of like an X). Then Print, Entire Image, also click on source data, Continue, follow print page. You can also zoom in on the information you want to see better. Print again, only choose Print zoomed view. I always print the full page and the citation. I also printed a zoom of their names and also the section of the page that showed where they were going and who would meet them.
4 - Printing a picture of the ship - (Since I now knew the name of the ship, it seemed like a good idea!)
Search, Immigration & Travel, Ship Pictures and Description (under Narrow by Category), Passenger Ships and Images (under Featured Data Collections), first letter of ship name, choose ship name, choose date range for immigration, choose an image to print.
I barely got into this story. I wanted to share all the things that happened to them with their crossing.
No comments:
Post a Comment