By James M. Beidler
Don't cross the pond without looking both ways: Your immigrant ancestors' ports of departure could open the door to new genealogical discoveries.
Few "aha" moments thrill genealogists more than finding an immigrant ancestor's passenger-arrival list. Seeing Great-great-grandpa's name on that manifest, you can almost envision him stepping onto American shores, ready for a new life in the New World. The end of Great-great-grandpa's journey doesn't necessarily mean the end of your Immigration-research thrills, however. Equally exciting discoveries may await you at his port of embarkation.
Departure records are easy to overlook-after all, US passenger-arrival lists already supply a wealth of genealogical clues, and departure ports didn't always create correspondingly detailed counterparts (governments typically were more concerned with keeping tabs on who they were letting in than who was going out).
But for many of our immigrant ancestors-roughly a third of all American transplants-genealogically revealing passenger records lie on the other side of the pond. And for more-elusive emigrants, you often can find substantive embarkation-record substitutes, such as passport applications, residential registrations and even reconstructed departure lists.
So join us as we cruise through the possibilities for documenting your ancestors' departures. We'll focus on European ports, since that continent supplied the largest numbers of newcomers, including America's “great wave” of immigration during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Welcome these resources into your research repertoire, and you'll say hello to new details about your family's farewell to the old country.