Issue 11.10
After writing articles for the Senior Sampler for over two years now, I keep thinking I am going to run out things to tell you. But, with new technology and the world of genealogy moving at a booming pace, I think my worries are unnecessary. I just keep finding new advances and exciting new things to help you discover your ancestors.
The Immigrant Ancestors Project, sponsored by the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University, uses emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants in their native countries, which is not found in the port registers and naturalization documents in the destination countries. Volunteers working with scholars and researchers at Brigham Young University are creating a database of millions of immigrants based on these emigration registers.
Between 1821 and 1924, the world saw one of the greatest migrations ever, as approximately fifty-five million Europeans emigrated. The vast majority went to the Americas– 33 million to the United States, 5.4 million to Argentina, 4.5 million to Canada, 3.8 million to Brazil and the rest in smaller, but significant numbers to countries from Mexico to Chile as well as to Australia and other Pacific rim countries. These immigrants, emigrants–migrants all–melded with indigenous and previous immigrants to enrich and forever change the recipient countries and their cultures. While Ireland, Germany, Italy, and England top the list in terms of numbers departing, every country in Europe contributed to the flow. These statistics and associated studies are only a black-and-white sketch of the rich tapestry of individual experiences that make up this great migration.
For those tracing the story of an individual immigrant, even the best passenger lists tell only part of the story, and most do not even do that. Over half of those in the United States do not give key details such as place of birth, and few give story details such as reasons for emigrating. For all of these reasons the European records of emigration, which are at the heart of the Immigrant Ancestors Project, need to be consulted to give a more complete understanding of the emigration process and its individual stories.
To access the information online so far, visit http://immigrants.byu.edu/
Shanna Jones is a professional genealogist. For additional information, Shanna can be reached at (435) 628-4900 or shannasjones@msn.com.