I recently looked at 44 ship manifests which came up when I used a certain surname in the ANCESTRY genealogy database. I was watching to see if there was any pattern I could follow to put relatives together from the old country to the new.
I believe you must read the manifest yourself and not take the text version for granted because there have been all sorts of transcribing errors.I REALIZED THAT THIS DATBASE has A MISLEADING ERROR BUILT IN on the FORM used for the TEXT VERSION of the New York ship manifests! When you read the text version you see the word BIRTH as if the immigrant was being asked in New York " Where Were you Born?" when the actual question asked on the manifests is not "Where were you born" but where was your last permanent address?
I wonder how many family historians have been mislead and repeated this error, or even gone on a useless quest because they assumed that the Ancestry database was right in reporting a location as a BIRTH location?
Simply, many immigrants did not leave HOME! Some did, and usually you will see that they are saying they left a parent or a husband or wife.
But sometimes they simply went to stay with a relative - a sibling or aunt or uncle - in another location. They gave up their own address (as we would do if say an apartment lease was up before we were ready to move to another city). There they stayed until maybe a baby was born or money promised from America came in and until it was time to get to the rail station and then the ship port. Some did not go directly onto a ship but stayed somewhere else, such as near the very port they planned to leave, for a time to earn money, or got off the ship in South Hampton and tried England for a while!
Please be very careful with this one! As you know the words "Permanent Address" are also not always taken seriously.
Q: What's a permanent address today?
A: Anywhere you stay when you are not traveling!
