Ireland
Finding Your Ancestors from the UK and Ireland
It’s no secret that the United States has close ties to Britain—just check any history book. Genealogically speaking, immigrants from the British Isles—including Ireland—make up a significant portion of the U.S. population today.
Ireland
Finding Your Ancestors from the UK and Ireland
It’s no secret that the United States has close ties to Britain—just check any history book. Genealogically speaking, immigrants from the British Isles—including Ireland—make up a significant portion of the U.S. population today.
British immigration to the U.S. began in the 1600s, but particularly large waves occurred around 1870 and between 1881 and 1890 when the difficult living conditions of the Industrial Revolution prompted people to leave their homeland.
Irish Immigration
One of the most significant emigrations occurred between 1847 and 1860—spurred on by the Irish potato famine and its aftermath. By its end, hundreds of thousands of Irish had escaped to America in overcrowded ships. Immigration rose again between the 1870 and 1890, resulting from tenant displacements, crop failures, and religious and political strife throughout Ireland.
Tip: Your British or Irish ancestry could send you far back in time. Create timelines for families to help you quickly view the key events in your family tree, including migration, key life moments, and local events that may have affected your ancestor.
Locating Their Arrival
While Ancestry® provides a huge collection of U.S. passenger arrival lists, your potential success in finding details about your British or Irish ancestor’s arrival can hinge upon when he or she arrived in the New World.
Key Dates
What You’ll Find
Colonial period through 1819
Passenger lists weren’t required but some ship captains retained lists of all aboard. Search the Passenger and Immigration List Index to see if a record of your ancestor’s arrival exists. Records in this collection date back to the 1500s.
1820-1893
Passenger lists were first required to be kept; however, details on these lists are somewhat limited. To successfully identify an ancestor in a less-detailed list, look for the full family unit. Compare names, location information, dates and any other available details to facts you’ve discovered in later U.S. records about the family to determine if the person could really be your ancestor.
1893-1906
Sixteen new fields were added to passenger lists, including marital status, last residence, final destination, literacy, financial status, and others. Use each of these to help you determine if you’re looking at the correct person.
After 1906
Manifests were required to include a physical description of the passenger and place of birth; shortly thereafter, name and address of the closest living relative in the country of origin was added. Use the latter to help you locate the family in the homeland.
Key Dates
Colonial period through 1819
What you’ll find: Passenger lists weren’t required but some ship captains retained lists of all aboard. Search the Passenger and Immigration List Index to see if a record of your ancestor’s arrival exists. Records in this collection date back to the 1500s.
1820-1893
What you’ll find: Passenger lists were first required to be kept; however, details on these lists are somewhat limited. To successfully identify an ancestor in a less-detailed list, look for the full family unit. Compare names, location information, dates and any other available details to facts you’ve discovered in later U.S. records about the family to determine if the person could really be your ancestor.
1893-1906
What you’ll find: Sixteen new fields were added to passenger lists, including marital status, last residence, final destination, literacy, financial status, and others. Use each of these to help you determine if you’re looking at the correct person.
After 1906
What you’ll find: Manifests were required to include a physical description of the passenger and place of birth; shortly thereafter, name and address of the closest living relative in the country of origin was added. Use the latter to help you locate the family in the homeland.
Steps to Discovering Your Irish and British Roots
STEP 1: BEGIN WITH RECORDS CREATED BY THE FAMILY IN THE U.S.
Click on the Search tab at Ancestry® to get started. Input the name of an ancestor who would have been living during the 20th century. Include other details including birth year, residence or birthplace and the names of other relatives, if available.
HOW: Click on the Search tab at Ancestry® to get started. Input the name of an ancestor who would have been living during the 20th century. Include other details including birth year, residence or birthplace and the names of other relatives, if available.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Click on the results returned and inspect the details. Family names, ages, relationships, birthplaces, occupations, and addresses (scan horizontally across the page to see all of the information) can help you determine if you’ve found the correct family.
Tip: Your British family line may run very deep, but you’ll still want to start in the records created most recently and march back step by step until you find the ancestor who was born on foreign soil. That way you’ll know you’re researching the right family and the right immigrant.
STEP 2: FIND THE PERSON WHO IMMIGRATED IN THE IMMIGRATION AND TRAVEL COLLECTION on Ancestry®.
Once you know who immigrated—and have his or her name, approximate birth year, and other identifying details from census and other records—search for records directly related to his or her immigration.
HOW: Click on the Search tab on Ancestry®. From the Special Collections list on the right side of the page, select Immigration and Travel to limit your search to records from this collection. Fill in the search form with details you’ve discovered about your family’s immigrant ancestor—name, birth year, year of arrival—and search. You can fill these in later if you’ve received too many results, but be careful: immigration details reported years later on a census may not be entirely accurate.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The Immigration and Travel collection includes passenger arrival lists, naturalization (citizenship) documents, passport applications, and other records that link to a person’s international travel. Compare dates, family members and other details you find on an Immigration and Travel record to the information you’ve already collected about your ancestor to see if you’ve found a match.
WHERE NEXT: With any research, it helps to know where your ancestors lived before immigrating to the U.S. to find them in records created in the homeland. But even without a specific hometown, you may be able to locate later immigrating British ancestors in census records at Ancestry® by focusing on the full family itself. Learn as much as you can about children, parents and siblings after immigration through U.S. census records, passenger lists, and naturalization documents first. Then compare this information to UK census records, birth, marriage, and death records and more to see if you’ve found the right family. Remember, though, once you trace the family back before civil registration and the 1841 census, you’ll need the hometown name so you can search church records there.
STEP 3: USE NAME, BIRTH DETAILS, AND PLACE INFORMATION TO LOCATE YOUR ANCESTOR IN THE RECORDS CREATED IN THE HOME COUNTRY.
Use the same steps you use for U.S. research on your ancestors from the British Isles. Start with the most recent records you’re likely to find them in—and know that census records are key resources abroad, too. Make special note of the entire family. You can use these details to help you follow them back through time.
HOW: Click on the Search tab at Ancestry®. At the bottom of the form is a “Collection Focus” option. Select “UK and Irish” as the priority to focus your search on records created in the UK and Ireland. Be sure, however, to undo these settings before conducting your next search of all records.
WHERE NEXT: UK records on Ancestry® are vast – birth, marriage, and death records for some locations in England date back to the 15th century and UK and Wales census records go back to the middle of the 19th century. Immigration records, too, are extensive – family lines may have migrated out to points in North America, Australia, or any of a number of other locations. Use the details you discover in census records from the UK to explore all of these and more.
IRISH RECORDS on Ancestry® include key collections centered around land ownership, which make the discovery of a hometown that much more important. Irish parish and civil registration records can also be a goldmine. Learn more about finding your family in these records in the appendix at the end of this guide.
Tip: Go forward and backwards. Often records on Ancestry® are more than just a single page long. Be sure to click on the document image and use the arrows to page forward and backwards to see if there’s more information about your ancestor.
Download the full guide here.
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