Tracing Your Immigrant and Ethnic Ancestors: Specialized Records         Looking for Naturalization Records         Searching Out Passenger Lists         Guidebooks for Research         Immigrant and Ethnic Resources     .         Newsletter Forms Bookstore Courses Resources Identify Photos Speakers' Schedule Soundex Code Generator Now What? Online		American Originals By Sharon DeBartolo Carmack Whether your ancestors came through Ellis Island or were here to greet the Mayflower, their origins are part of the American story—and your story. Follow these tips to start discovering your immigrant and ethnic ancestors. Tackle specialized records. Look for American records specific to ethnic and immigrant groups. African-American researchers will look at specialized records such as slave schedules, plantation records, records of the "Freedmen's Bureau" and signature cards for the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, to name a few. You can learn about these records by consulting a guidebook for researching black ancestral roots, such as Dee Parmer Woodtor's Finding a Place Called Home: A Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity (Random House, $18) or David T. Thackery's Tracking Your African American Family History (Ancestry, $9.95). American Indian researchers will look at specialized records such as Indian census schedules and other federal records created in the relocation of tribes. These records and others are described in Curt B. Witcher and George J. Nixon's chapter, "Tracking Native American Family History," in The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Ancestry, $49.95). For those whose ancestors immigrated to America, naturalization records and passenger arrival lists are a key resource. Read on to learn about naturalization records and passenger lists. Find out the clues that will lead you to those specialized records in the December issue of Family Tree Magazine.
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