Travel with your ancestors
on the journey that led to you.
Travel with your ancestors on the journey that led to you.
Search our vast collection of immigration and travel records to discover your immigrant story.
Search our vast collection of immigration and travel records to discover your immigrant story.
Stories, memoirs and historical accounts can add depth and rich detail to your story. Read about the travels of a group of people, the success of a business venture and more — giving you insight into the time and place that shaped your ancestors’ lives.
Find your family in border crossings & passports
Find your family in border crossings & passports
Simply add what you know. Even a guess can help.
- San Francisco, California, U.S., Registers of Chinese Laborers Returning to the U.S.,1882–1888
- Switzerland, Jewish Arrivals, 1938–1945
- Canada, Immigration and Settlement Correspondence and Lists, 1817–1896
- U.S., Citizenship Affidavits of US-born Seamen at Select Ports, 1792–1869
- New York, U.S., Emigrant Savings Bank Records, 1850–1883
- Dutch Immigrants to America, 1820–1880
Other Research Resources
Other Research Resources
Records to bank on
New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank, founded in 1850, collected personal details about account holders that can help your research today.
How to make a big place seem smaller
Ever wonder why so many people in your ancestor’s neighborhood hail from the same homeland? It’s called chain migration.
Good to know
Ellis Island wasn’t the only port in the sea. Learn why you should check other locations too.
Fast facts
Get a quick overview of American immigration and the America where your ancestor arrived.
Other Immigration Stories
Other Immigration Storiess
He arrived, just not at Ellis Island
See how one Ancestry member learned her father wasn’t really an Ellis Island immigrant like she’d always believed.
WATCH NOW: Researchers help you find your immigrant roots.
WATCH NOW: Researchers help you find your immigrant roots.
A simple DNA test can show you where your immigration story began.
A simple DNA test can show you where your immigration story began.
Immigration and Emigration Message Boards
Immigration and Emigration Message Boards
Connect with other people searching for their immigration stories.
Founded in 1850, the Emigrant Savings Bank was established by members of the Irish Emigrant Society following the huge wave of Irish immigration that resulted from the Irish potato famine. While most depositors were of Irish descent, this wasn’t a requirement. To identify account holders, the bank asked for personal details that are pure gold to family historians. You’ll find them in four kinds of records:
Test books (1850-68) record the depositor’s name, account number, occupation, residence and remarks — which can include names of other family members, immigration information or even birth or residence information in Ireland.
Changes made to an account were recorded in Transfer, Signature, and Test Books (1850-83). These could include a new signature, address, or account holder. You might also discover occupation, birth year, birthplace, and family relations.
Deposit-Account Ledger entries contain an account history.
Index Books include name and account number.
Details not found in your direct ancestor's account may show up in a sibling's account so check for family members too. Also look for sponsors, neighbors and other people who regularly appear in records with or near your ancestors.
Say you’re a new immigrant. Would you feel more comfortable in a huge city among strangers or in a community surrounded by people who looked like you, spoke like you, even came from the same hometown?
Germans began arriving in New York in great numbers in the mid-19th century. The ’48ers — German immigrants who came in 1848 — helped lay the infrastructure for a German community by setting up newspapers, schools, businesses, and shops. In the 1840s and ’50s so many German immigrants settled a portion of New York’s Lower East Side that people called it Kleindeutschland — Little Germany.
It’s no surprise that ethnic enclaves sprang up in the United States as immigrants made their way to foreign shores. Germans, Irish, Italians, and Jews established communities in New York. Russians, Poles, and Swedes claimed blocks in Chicago. Hungarians gathered in Cleveland and Czechs in towns in Texas. Chinatowns formed in the West as Asian immigrants banded together for protection and to form a nucleus for future political influence.
To see whether your ancestor lived in a “Greektown” or “Little Italy,” take a look at census records, which have included questions about nativity since 1850. Passenger lists can provide clues, too. Did your great-grandparents sail with people from the same village or making for the same final destination?
Ethnic enclaves can hold “what next?” clues for family historians. Since residents often came from similar regions of a country, neighboring families may have been friends, neighbors, or even relatives back in the homeland, too. If you have trouble tracing a family forward in America or backward to the old country, consider looking at the neighbors, where they came from, where they went, and who they were. They may hold the clue to your own family’s whereabouts.
Even if the family story points to an arrival at Ellis Island, it still pays to search for your family’s immigrants at all American ports and border crossings. Family members may have arrived on different ships, through different ports, and may have even sailed to America more than once (after, for example, a visit to the homeland to bring back the rest of the family or because of a job that took the ancestor overseas). Searching the entire Immigration & Emigration collection at Ancestry will help you find all of an ancestor’s comings and goings.
- From 1607 to the present, approximately 71 million people immigrated to America
- Between 1820 and 1960, the height of American immigration, more than 41 million people immigrated to America
- The major ports of arrival in America were New York, Boston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia and San Francisco
- The major ports of departure in Europe included Liverpool, England; Bremen, Germany; Naples, Italy; Antwerp, Belgium and Hamburg, Germany
- More than 95 percent of Americans descend from individuals who did not live on this continent in the 18th century
- The top five immigrant countries of origin from 1820 to 1960 were Germany, Italy, Ireland, Great Britain and Austria-Hungary
- Immigration peaked in 1907, when approximately 1.3 million immigrants arrived at U.S. ports
“To the day he died at age 95, my father insisted that he came to America through Ellis Island at the age of 3. Constant searches for his record there came up cold … until I joined Ancestry and opened up the search to other ports, too. Lo and behold, I found my Dad, his slightly older brother and sister and their parents arriving in Baltimore. As I continue tracing family lines that I discovered thanks to this Baltimore landing, I’m forever in awe at how my ancestors drew upon courage and a hope for a better life in America for them and their future generations!”
— Jerry Cohen
Lake Oswego, OR
Your ancestors took their DNA to the new world. Where will your DNA take you?
Your ancestors took their DNA to the new world. Where will your DNA take you?
Your ancestors took everything they could carry, including a little bit of their past. Now with AncestryDNA, you can open completely new avenues of research and uncover a time in your past that’s just beyond the records and paper trails. Find out where your ancestors lived, maybe discover a new ethnicity or connect to new relatives. A distant cousin could lead you to new clues, missing information and new answers.
What you get with AncestryDNA:
What you get with AncestryDNA:
Ethnicity Discovery Reveal your ethnic roots and explore your ancestors’ birth locations on a modern day map.
New Connections Find new cousins to grow your family tree with a list of DNA matches.
Relevant History Discover more of your recent past—up to a thousand years.
Advanced Science A technologically advanced DNA test that comprehensively looks at both sides of your family.
Complete Experience Built to be integrated with the vast collection of records, family trees and community on Ancestry.
Continually Updated Receive new DNA matches and updates on ethnicity findings to broaden your search.