Missouri Emigration and Immigration

How to Find the Records
Missouri, being entirely inland, has no seaports. Immigrants would have initially arrived at a port on the coast. To search those records, see United States Immigration Online Genealogy Records.

Online Resources

 * 1500s-1900s All U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s at Ancestry; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri; Also at MyHeritage; index only ($)
 * 1895-1956 United States, Border Crossings from Canada, 1895-1956 at MyHeritge; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri

Cultural Groups

 * British Aliens in the United States During the War of 1812, e-book
 * 1920-1939 Germany, Bremen Emigration Lists, 1920-1939 at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri
 * Germans Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri
 * Italians Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri
 * Russians Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritage; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Missouri

Passport Records Online

 * 1795-1925 - at FamilySearch — index and images
 * 1795-1925 - U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925 Index and images, at Ancestry ($)

Offices to Contact
Although many records are included in the online records listed above, there are other records available through these archives and offices. For example, there are many minor ports that have not yet been digitized. There are also records for more recent time periods. For privacy reasons, some records can only be accessed after providing proof that your ancestor is now deceased.

U.S. Citizenship and and Immigration Services Genealogy Program
The USCIS Genealogy Program is a fee-for-service program that provides researchers with timely access to historical immigration and naturalization records of deceased immigrants. If the immigrant was born less than 100 years ago, you will also need to provide proof of his/her death.

Immigration Records Available

 * A-Files: Immigrant Files, (A-Files) are the individual alien case files, which became the official file for all immigration records created or consolidated since April 1, 1944.
 * Alien Registration Forms (AR-2s): Alien Registration Forms (Form AR-2) are copies of approximately 5.5 million Alien Registration Forms completed by all aliens age 14 and older, residing in or entering the United States between August 1, 1940 and March 31, 1944.
 * Registry Files:''' Registry Files are records, which document the creation of immigrant arrival records for persons who entered the United States prior to July 1, 1924, and for whom no arrival record could later be found.
 * Files:''' Visa Files are original arrival records of immigrants admitted for permanent residence under provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924.

Requesting a Record

 * Web Request Page allows you to request a records, pay fees, and upload supporting documents (proof of death).
 * Record Requests Frequently Asked Questions

Finding Town of Origin
Records in the countries emigrated from are kept on the local level. You must first identify the name of the town where your ancestors lived to access those records. If you do not yet know the name of the town of your ancestor's birth, there are well-known strategies for a thorough hunt for it.
 * U. S. Immigration Records: Finding the Town of Origin

Background
A few thousand French settlers remained in the area after the United States bought Missouri as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, but most pre-statehood settlers were Americans of English and Ulster Scots origin. They came mainly from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Settlement spread up the river valleys into central Missouri by the 1820s and into western Missouri by the 1830s. Latter-day Saint immigrants settled western Missouri in 1831 but were driven from the state in 1839.

If your ancestor was an early settler in Southwest Missouri, Rising's books likely discuss your family and it's origin:


 * Rising, Marsha Hoffman. Opening the Ozarks: First Families in Southwest Missouri, 1835-1839. 4 vols. Derry, N.H.: American Society of Genealogists, 2005..

Rising learned that most early settlers in this section of Missouri had moved there from Tennessee.

Both the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon Trail began at Independence, Missouri. Many Missourians followed these trails westward to California, Texas, Oregon, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas. In spite of this emigration from the state, Missouri was the fifth most populous state in the United States at the close of the Civil War.

The Oregon-California Trails Association is an educational organization that promotes the story of the westward migration from Missouri, among other places. Their site includes a personal name index to trail diaries, journals, reminiscences, autobiographies, newspaper articles, guidebooks and letters at Paper-trail.org

Overseas immigration to Missouri began in earnest in the 1830s when large numbers of Germans began to settle the farm country west of St. Louis and south of the Missouri River known as the "Missouri Rhineland." Beginning in the 1840s German and Irish immigrants settled in urban centers. After 1880, St. Louis and Kansas City attracted groups of Italians, Greeks, Poles, and east European Jews. The St. Louis Public Library has a collection of death notices from 1878-1892 taken from a German newspaper called Westliche Post has a helpful website with obits of German emigrants to Missouri.

An especially helpful description of settlement patterns in Missouri is in Milton D. Rafferty, Historical Atlas of Missouri (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982) ).

Before the Civil War the Ohio-Mississippi-Missouri river system was the major migration route to Missouri. New Orleans was the favorite port of entry for early German immigrants to Missouri. After the war, most settlers came by railroad through the lower midwestern states. To find an immigrant ancestor, you may want to check ship passenger lists for East Coast ports and for the Port of New Orleans.

Immigration Records
Immigration refers to people coming into a country. Emigration refers to people leaving a country to go to another. Immigration records usually take the form of ship's passenger lists collected at the port of entry. See Online Resources.

Information in Passenger Lists

 * Before 1820 - Passenger lists before 1820 included name, departure information and arrival details. The names of wives and children were often not included.


 * 1820-1891 - Customs Passenger Lists between 1820 and 1891 asked for each immigrant’s name, their age, their sex, their occupation, and their country of origin, but not the city or town of origin.


 * 1891-1954 - Information given on passenger lists from 1891 to 1954 included:
 * name, age, sex,
 * nationality, occupation, marital status,
 * last residence, final destination in the U.S.,
 * whether they had been to the U.S. before (and if so, when, where and how long),
 * if joining a relative, who this person was, where they lived, and their relationship,
 * whether able to read and write,
 * whether in possession of a train ticket to their final destination, who paid for the passage,
 * amount of money the immigrant had in their possession,
 * whether the passenger had ever been in prison, a poorhouse, or in an institution for the insane,
 * whether the passenger was a polygamist,
 * and immigrant's state of health.


 * 1906-- - In 1906, the physical description and place of birth were included, and a year later, the name and address of the passenger’s closest living relative in the country of origin was included.

Information in Passports
Over the years, passports and passport applications contained different amounts of information about the passport applicant. The first passports that are available begin in 1795. These usually contained the individual's name, description of individual, and age. More information was required on later passport applications, such as:


 * Birthplace
 * Birth date
 * Naturalization information
 * Arrival information, if foreign born

Websites
Cyndislist.com

St. Louis Public Library Passenger Lists

Rootsweb.com Passenger Lists

FamilySearch.org

Ancestry.com

FindMyPast.com

StevenMorse.org

Missouri Digital Heritage: http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/

Missouri State Archives: http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/