Newspapers recorded every day of our ancestors’ lives – and that is a good thing for genealogists. Time and time again old documents, from death certificates to the census, simply state that John Clifford was born “in Ireland” – and never tell us where in Ireland. Often it is newspapers that are critical to our finding the name of the community or the county in Ireland where our Irish ancestors were born.
For example, this obituary for John Clifford from 1880 tells us where in Ireland he was from. Thanks to GenealogyBank, we know that he was born in Killeshandra, County Cavan, Ireland.
Government and other official passenger lists routinely list that the waves of Irish immigrants were born in “Ireland” without any further details – but it is in newspapers that we can find two other key facts that were not recorded in the passenger lists genealogists are familiar with.
I am just amazed every time I read these Irish American passenger lists in online newspapers and see that they tell me where these new arrivals had lived in Ireland, and where they were going to live in America.
How in the world did the editors of New York City’s Irish American newspapers find the time to interview and document the incoming Irish immigrants, and keep doing it for over a century?
Irish American newspapers were diligent about reporting the great migration of Irish immigrants to America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Newspapers like the Irish Nation and Irish World regularly published lists of Irish passengers that came over on the passenger ships that week.
These published lists did not include every Irish immigrant – but for the tens of thousands that were interviewed and documented by the newspapers, these lists give us the critical place of origin and where they were heading, valuable information that is just not found in any other source.
One of my colleagues, Duncan Kuehn, closely compared some of the passenger lists published in newspapers to the corresponding federal passenger lists. She found that for the passengers interviewed and listed by the newspapers, their names were often more complete – and often, additional names of accompanying family members were given in the newspaper account that did not appear in the federal lists.
It would be even better if the newspapers had interviewed every single passenger, but we’re grateful for the excellent job they did on the ones that were documented.
Genealogists must use these newspaper passenger lists.
Sources:
Image #1: GenealogyBank.com, New York Herald (New York City, New York), 4 November 1880, page 8.
Image #2: GenealogyBank.com, Irish Nation (New York City, New York), 27 May 1882, page 8.
Thomas Jay Kemp is the Director of Genealogy Products at GenealogyBank. Tom is an internationally known librarian and archivist, and the author of over 35 genealogy books and hundreds of articles about genealogy and family history. He Tom has been working in libraries and archives for over 50 years.
Tom previously served as the Chair of the National Council of Library & Information Associations (Washington, D.C.) and as Library Director of both the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
