Passenger Lists

What is a Passenger List and How Do You Recognize One?

A passenger list is a document created by shipping companies, immigration departments, or port authorities that records the names and details of passengers traveling on a ship. These lists were often created for immigration, customs, or administrative purposes.

Passenger lists will often include:

• Ship name
• Ports of departure and arrival
• Dates of departure and arrival
• Names of passengers
• Columns or tables with headings like “Name,” “Age,” “Sex,” “Country of Origin,” “Nationalities,” “Occupation,” etc.

Keywords

Here is a comprehensive list of common English passenger list terms and their equivalents in the languages wherein these records are written, using terminology typically found on historical or official documents. The languages were selected based on the entities in different countries that created passenger lists.

Natural Group

When digitizing passenger lists, all documents pertaining to a single passenger list should be captured together in the same digital folder and share the same descriptive metadata.

Descriptive Metadata

The metadata describes all the images in the natural group. Check the natural group cover, then spine, then inner pages, including the title page, for the metadata:

1. Date: Enter the Arrival Year
2. Locality: Enter the city of the Arrival Port
3. Creator: Using the language of the records, enter the name of the Shipping company, Port authority, or Immigration/Customs department
4. Volume: These records don’t typically have a volume designation code assigned to them. Enter a single hyphen (-) to indicate no such code exists.
5. Title: Using the language of the records, enter: Ship Manifest of [Vessel Name], [voyage date]
6. Custodian Reference ID: Enter the ID in the format from the table below relevant to the archive.
   

Countries and Ports with Historical Passenger Lists

United States

Start of Passenger Lists: 1820 (mandatory by U.S. law)
Primary Language(s): English

Major Ports:

• New York (Ellis Island, Castle Garden)
• Boston
• Baltimore
• Philadelphia
• New Orleans
• Galveston, TX
• Portland, ME
• San Francisco, CA

Canada

Start of Passenger Lists: 1865 (inbound lists), earlier for some ports like Quebec (from 1861)
Primary Language(s): English and French

Major Ports:

• Québec
• Montréal
• Halifax
• Gaspé
• Vancouver

United Kingdom

Start of Passenger Lists: 1890 (outbound lists), some earlier inbound lists exist
Primary Language(s): English

Major Ports:

• Liverpool
• Southampton
• London
• Plymouth
• Dover
• Falmouth
• Fishguard Harbour (Wales)

Germany

Start of Passenger Lists: 1850 (Hamburg), 1832 (Bremen)
Primary Language(s): German

Major Ports:

• Hamburg
• Bremen (Bremerhaven)
• Cuxhaven

France

Start of Passenger Lists: 1860s–1870s, varies by port
Primary Language(s): French

Major Ports:

• Le Havre
• Cherbourg
• Boulogne-sur-Mer
• Bordeaux
• Cannes

Italy

Start of Passenger Lists: 1880s, especially from Naples and Genoa
Primary Language(s): Italian

Major Ports:

• Genoa
• Naples
• Capri
• Fiume

Spain

Start of Passenger Lists: 1880s–1890s, limited earlier records
Primary Language(s): Spanish

Major Ports:

• Barcelona
• Cádiz
• Almeria
• A Coruña

Netherlands

Start of Passenger Lists: 1814 (Rotterdam), more consistent from 1840s
Primary Language(s): Dutch

Major Ports:

• Rotterdam

Belgium

Start of Passenger Lists: 1840s–1850s (Antwerp)
Primary Language(s): Dutch and French

Major Ports:

• Antwerp