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Locating the Immigration Information from Detained Persons

Research Tips & Hints

Tim Firkowski

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

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As we all know by now, documents are not always accurate especially when it comes to surname spelling in online indexes. So you are searching for immigration information via ship's manifest for your family on one of the online databases and one of your results show a page with detained individuals. The reasons for being detained varies, from medical issues to being a burden on society or waiting for another family member to meet up with.

Your search result only found the document that shows the person detained, but not the information in the Ships manifest itself. The reason this may have occurred is because the surname was transcribed wrong and your search criteria is not able to match it, or in this case I will show you, the surname listed in the manifest is totally different than in the detained records. So how can you find the information on the ships manifest with the information given on the detained document?

NYT715 1038-0213b

Lets examine what was found in a search for the surname Krzynowek: The result came up for Rosalia Krzynowek, but she appears in the Detained list and her name is handwritten. Why is her name handwritten when everyone else is typed? Also note that she has "#2" before her name. We also notice that it appears the edit is associated with the name down below "Teofila Krawczyk" where a line is drawn through the "&" symbol, where is shows "& ch", meaning (and child). We can locate the

page in the ships manifest where these two passengers are listed by the information that is provided just to the right of their names.

To find out what that information means, you must look at the column headers. The number 44 to the right of their names refers to the "Group" or the page number they are listed on. The number under the Number column refers to the line number on that page. Note that it shows "24/5" or line number 24 and 25. The fact that the line numbers are listed together will tell you that these two people were probably traveling together. Since Rosalia did not show up as a result in the ship's manifest itself, there is no way to know how to do a search to find her. In this case we might assume that Rosalia is listed under the surname Krawczyk, but rather than possibly chasing your tail, the best way to find it is to manually locate her in the ship's manifest by scrolling

through the pages in the set of images you are viewing until you find page 44. The page number will appear on the upper left or right and is often in large print.

We find their listing on the page exactly as it showed in the detained persons list. Now we can get all the information we are looking for. In this case it appears that Rosalia was a child traveling with Teofila Krawczyk. It was probably an error that she was listed as Teofila's child and no deception was intended. Rosalia is listed on the main page of the ship's manifest as the grandchild of the person listed for Teofila Krawczyk. Although Rosalia could be the grandchild, we do not know that for sure (that is a clue). Her name is corrected on the detained person list and her father is listed as the person she is meeting. If you would like to see the documents yourself on Ancestry, I have created links from the images above or you can link from here - Rosalia DETAINED & Rosalia Manifest.

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Immigration Ship's Manifest

About the author

Tim Firkowski

I have been doing genealogy research since 2002 & have worked full time as a Professional Genealogist since 2008. I specialize in Polish and American-Canadian Genealogy. As a member of APG, I was the 2010/2011 President of the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG). I have Certificates of Completion for studies in "Foundations of Forensic Genealogy" and "Advanced Forensic Genealogy Techniques". I have been a volunteer librarian at the local Family History Center, and a genealogy research consultant at “Ask the Expert” Ancestry Road Shows. I have traveled to Poland numerous times & researched in churches and archives. At conferences and special events, you may find me dressed up in my Sherlock Holmes outfit, or my Kujawy (the folk costume from the region in Poland where my ancestors came from).