A search for an ancestor's origin is a hope that you'll be able to link into records such as birth, baptismal, marriage, and death in church or civil records in another country and from these documents also learn who a person's parents were, so as to go back another generation or more.
Be careful to read what the question is on passenger lists and other documents). Don't confuse "where were you born" with "where did you leave?" Yes, it is possible the person was born and left the same place but maybe not. Men in need of work moved to work more than women but even a servant girl might follow an employer.
On the steamships coming into the New York Harbor, the questions are "Where did you leave?" and "Where are you going?" The later usually being more informative because a name, relationship, and sometimes an entire address is written.
On documents which some of the Industrial Revolution era / ELLIS ISLAND immigrants can be found on, such as United States World War I Draft Registration, Naturalization/ Citizenship, and Death Certificate (Civil), there will be a comforting repeat of information.
However, as much as we would love for this to always be the case, here's a scenario from my personal research.
A woman's husband makes two trips to America through Ellis in steerage. He lists two different places he left and he leaves from two different ports. The name is the same and I decide it is the same man for two reasons. Both places he left are in the same region, one a larger city. It's impossible to know how long he stayed in America the first time. But he was going to the same place in America both trips. I only know this because I read every original ship manifest that listed men with his name.
However, my notion that his wife would also come through Ellis turns out to be wrong. She shows up with a baby she's nursing on a 2nd class ticket some time later. The family story is that this baby was a couple months old. The baby's date of birth is on her death certificate and other American documents consistently. She could have been premature, but I see she was six months old on that ship. I see it is quite possible that the husband went back to the Old Country, the couple conceived a child. Then at perhaps the three month point in the pregnancy it was clear he had better make a decision about America and employment.
But where did she leave from? Another place again - her sister's. A family story is that her new mother-in-law wasn't nice. So I guess she decided it would be better to stay with her sister and have her baby there with her husband in America. Goodbye Mother-in-law!
But imagine another scenario. You or your spouse are poor. You love your family and friends but you need to earn income. You have the sense that you might never come back once you go to America. So you go visiting before you leave. Or you give up your own house and stay with family - a long good-bye. When you answer that question about where you left, it could be a location that's not where you were born at all.
And here is another scenario that wasn't uncommon. A man uproots his family with the final goal to be America. But, like the scene in the famous Titanic film made by James Cameron, there are men working around the port earning money for a ticket or tickets. This was the case for many leaving the German and British ports. Irish going to Liverpool. Slavs going to Breman or Hamburg. In which case, as passengers they may report having left there rather than a home town, especially if they stayed a year or more.
The expense of steamship travel certainly put a distance between classes although you might not assume a better ticket meant that a person came from more money. While steerage passengers felt the ships movements down below and knew their trip to America might be their first and last time ever on a ship, there were merchants and buyers for New York stores going back and forth regularly, Honeymooners on their European vacations, and members of High Society going about their yearly seasonal progress of travel. The Titanic film does an excellent job of revealing class difference on a ship; rich, middle class, and poor. However, a man who came in steerage might earn enough to provide a better ticket for his wife, wishing to spare her the steerage experience.
And, what if you're determined to unite your entire family in America, including your sibling who is "slow" or visibly different? You might choose another way to get them into the country rather than leave them alone. You might find yourself and your sibling on another boat, even one with sails, or landing on a beach and walking in.
C 2021
This post is part of a series of posts focused on Ellis Island, New York Harbor, and Industrial Age immigrants.
