Idaho Emigration and Immigration

How to Find the Records
Idaho, 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 ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho; Also at MyHeritage; index only ($)
 * 1895-1956 United States, Border Crossings from Canada, 1895-1956 at MyHeritge; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho
 * 1895-1960 U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960 at Ancestry; index & images ($)
 * 1904-1944 Index to Alien Arrivals at Canadian Atlantic and Pacific Seaports, 1904-1944 at Ancestry; index & images ($)

Cultural Groups

 * 1920-1939 Germany, Bremen Emigration Lists, 1920-1939 at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho
 * 1924-1956 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
 * Germans Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho
 * Italians Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritge; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho
 * Russians Immigrating to the United States at MyHeritage; index only ($); includes those with Destination of Idaho

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
The pioneers who traveled over the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 1850s rarely settled in Idaho. There were temporary trading posts and Protestant and Catholic missions but no permanent white settlement in Idaho until 1860 when settlers from Utah established Latter-day Saint communities in the Cache Valley.

In the early 1860s, many settlers returned from Washington, Oregon, and California to the gold fields of Idaho's northern panhandle. In the mid-1860s, silver miners established mining settlements around Silver City in Owyhee County. At the peak of this first mining boom as many as 70,000 whites may have been in Idaho, but by 1870 this number had dwindled to the 15,000 counted in the census.

Settlement was stimulated in the 1880s and 1890s by new mining booms in the north and by the arrival of railroads in the farmlands of southern Idaho. During this period, some Latter-day Saint families who had moved from Utah continued their migration northward to Alberta Province in Canada. Register of the Histories of Pioneers who settled in the Upper Snake River Valley, 1883-1893

In the early 1900s, when reclamation projects opened desert lands to farming, a new wave of settlement from nearby states took place in southern Idaho. Today, nearly 70 percent of Idaho's population lives within 30 miles of the Snake River.

Most Idaho residents are of British, German, or Scandinavian origin, although there are about 6,000 Basques living near Boise. If you are looking for information on Basque settlement, you may find helpful information in Pat Bieter, The Basques in Idaho. Boise, Idaho: Idaho State Historical Society, 197?

A few records of other ethnic groups are listed in the FamilySearch Catalog under. One such group for which an index is being created is the Japanese (see Japanese Immigration to the United States 1887-1924, a web site created by BYU-Idaho).

There was no port of entry common to overseas immigrants who settled in Idaho. The Family History Library and the National Archives have passenger lists for east coast ports for the years between 1820 and about 1920. You'll find suggestions on Latter-day Saint immigration sources on the Utah Wiki page. Detailed information on other immigration sources is on the United States Wiki page.

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

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

In-country Migration
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