When our ancestors moved from one country to another, they left behind more than their footprints: They left a paper trail, often full of pertinent family history information. The Immigration Ancestors Project (IAP) <immigrants.byu.edu> aims to lead you to the start of that paper trail.

Sponsored by Brigham Young University's Center for Family History and Genealogy, the ongoing project culls immigrants' birth information from their native countries' emigration registers, which contain details US naturalization papers and passenger-arrival lists often lack. Scholars and researchers are teaming with volunteers to put transcriptions of those registers — covering millions of immigrants — into the IAP's online database.