Irish to America Passenger and Immigration Lists Vol. 2, 1846-1886

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About the Data

Sail across the Atlantic with your Irish ancestors using an all-new volume of Irish to America. This second volume contains completely new details for 550,000+ additional immigrants! Search this fully indexed data set, referencing arrivals in Boston between 1846 and 1851 and New York between 1866 and 1886. The information was compiled from the original ship manifest schedules filed by all vessels entering United States ports in accordance with an Act of Congress in March of 1819. "Irish to America" was produced in collaboration with the Balch Institute Center for Immigration Research and the John F. Kennedy Trust. Information was selected, coordinated, and arranged from ship manifest schedules at the National Immigration Archives in Philadelphia. The National Immigration Archives maintains one of the most extensive collections of European immigration data in the Western hemisphere with U.S. passenger lists from 1820 to just before World War I.

A good deal of information in this data set was collected from passengers who immigrated to the United States during the Great Famine (1845-1849). Between 1847 and 1854, 1.6 million Irish immigrated to the United States (most of them arrived in New York). This immigration marked the first voluntary mass migration to the United States.

You can learn a great deal of information about your Irish ancestor by researching with this resource. All of the records include the name of the ship on which your ancestors traveled, the port from which they embarked on their journey, the port of debarkation, and the ship's arrival date. Most of the records list an immigrant's age, gender, occupation, country of origin, destination, and manifest ID number. In addition, you may learn the village or town or origin, purpose for travel, and mode of travel.

More About this Data Set

From this data set, you can learn a great deal of valuable information about your immigrant ancestors. The primary types of information you'll find are:

Name — You'll find the individual's given name and surname, as well as any titles that were included in the original index.

You should note that names of immigrants were often recorded as they were heard and that many immigrants could not spell their own names. Thus, spelling variations of names occur and members of the same family arriving at different times or places may be found under different spelling.

You may have difficulty locating some names for the following reasons:

Some given names have been abbreviated. For example, "Robert" may appear as "Robt," and "Elizabeth" as "Eliz."
Some given names are misspelled, contain typos, or may be spelled unusually. For example, you may wish to search for a "McMahon" under "NcMahon" since (in rare cases) it may have been typed incorrectly
Some given and middle names are truncated. Specifically, this happens when the name, including the spaces between the given name, middle name, and last name, is longer than twenty-three characters. For example, "McCormack, Annabelle Margaret" would be listed as "McCormack, Annabelle Mar."
Some of the given names listed here may have been truncated. For example, the truncated name "Fr." could be "Friedrike," "Fritz," or "Franz."

If you are unable to locate a particular given name and surname, try switching the given name to an initial, abbreviation, or possible misspelling. If the surname is not common, you may want to search only on the surname.

Age — The immigrant's age at the time of arrival.

Nation of Origin — The nation in which the immigrant's shipboard journey began.

Date of Arrival — The date the immigrant arrived in the United States.

Final Destination — The immigrant's final destination in the United States.

You may also find additional information about your ancestor in this record, such as:

The name of the ship on which your ancestor sailed
The ship's manifest ID number
Your ancestor's gender
Your ancestor's occupation
Your ancestor's village or town of origin
Your ancestor's port of embarkation
Your ancestor's port of debarkation
Your ancestor's purpose for travel
Your ancestor's mode of travel
Your ancestor's final destination

With this information, you should be able to determine quite a comprehensive account of your ancestor's arrival in the United States.