click to view original photo

Jumping Over the Pond: Resources for Tracing Immigrant Ancestors

For most researchers the prospect of researching an immigrant ancestor is the most excited and the most dreaded. It can be difficult to find information thousands of miles from home and dealing with records and repositories that are unfamiliar. The following bibliography will provide some ideas for researching immigrant ancestors online and in books.

Share

Content Details

Type: Article
Resource: GenWeekly
Prepared by:
Word Count: 453 (approx.)
ISBN: 091648937X
Short URL:

For most researchers the prospect of researching an immigrant ancestor is the most exciting and the most dreaded. It can be difficult to find information thousands of miles from home and dealing with records and repositories that are unfamiliar.

As with any research project, the first place to start is with home sources. Ask family members if they have naturalization records, correspondence, passports, photos and other papers that might hold clues for where the ancestor lived and when they came to America. From there, start with researching the immigrant's life in the United States and then jump back to the mother country. Before you spend too much time trying to find records in a different county, make sure that you read how-to books to learn more about that country and the records that are available.

The following list is some places that can assist you as you start tracing your immigrant ancestor's life. Websites that are subscription sites are followed with a ($).

Websites

Record Collections

Immigration Stations

Links

How-To

Books

For additional books, consult the online library catalog WorldCat and the digitized book website Google Books

Source Information: GenWeekly, New Providence, NJ, USA: Genealogy Today LLC, 2012.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Genealogy Today LLC.

*Effective May 2010, GenWeekly articles that are more than five years old no longer require a subscription for full access.

<< GenWeekly

<< Helpful Articles