Establish identity to find your immigrant ancestor

As worldwide genealogists, most of us have ancestors from other countries. For those of us who live in 'countries of origin,' we often get asked for help by people from the 'countries of destination.'

For example, most of my clients are Americans of Dutch descent, who need help tracing their ancestors from the Netherlands. Many of them come to me too soon; before they have enough information about their immigrant ancestor to identify them in Dutch records.

Departure of an emigrant ship, 1949. Credits: Steenkamp, collection Nationaal Archief, the Netherlands (CC-BY-SA)

The most important thing to remember when trying to find an immigrant ancestor in the country of origin is identity. In other words: You must know enough about the person to tell him or her apart from all the other people who ever lived on this earth.

Identity has several aspects:

• Name. Keep in mind that names change, especially if people move to another country where a different language is spoken. First names get translated (Jan/Johann/John/Jean/Juan) and last names get spelled differently or get translated too (Konings -> King, De Jong -> DeYoung). 
• Date and place of birth. Often, the records in the country of destination do not include an exact date or place, or the date is off by a few days or even years. A large city may be given as the place of birth rather than the small village where the birth actually took place. 
• Place of residence. Knowing where a person lived at a certain time will help to pinpoint the person. Finding out where other people in that place came from may point to a possible place of origin.
• Parents. The names of the parents may not be spelled correctly in records in the country of destination, especially if the parents themselves did not emigrate.
• Occupation. Most people would have been laborers or farmers, which does not help much in identifying an ancestor. But if your ancestor was a skilled laborer like a blacksmith or baker, he may have had the same occupation in the old country. 
• Religion. For most people, their religion would not change upon emigration, although they might attend a different church if the specific denomination wasn't available in the new location. 
• Associates. People often traveled in groups, so a neighbor in the new country may well have lived close by in the old country as well. Pay special attention to the people whom the immigrant ancestor associated with when they first arrived, since they are most likely to be connected back home.

Unless you know enough aspects about the identity of your immigrant ancestor, it is no use to go searching for him or her in the old country. If you try anyway, you may find a candidate, but without enough identifying information there is no way to tell if it is your ancestor or a person by the same name. In my experience, an immigrant ancestor whose identity is well established in the country of destination can often be found in the place of origin as well. The best place to start researching your immigrant ancestor is in the place where you know they lived, in the country of destination. 

The strategies for finding records in the country of origin will differ from place to place. I wrote an article about how to find your immigrant ancestor from the Netherlands on my blog. If you have any tips for finding immigrant ancestors in other countries, please leave a comment, or write your own blog post and post a link in the comments. 

Did any of your relatives pass through Ellis Island?

When I saw that on Mondays with Myrt on 8th September 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkLDfZbb2iA one of the topics to be discussed was the updated website for Ellis Island I did not expect to find anyone on the website from my family. 
After all my family, apart from one aunt, have always lived in England.

I have deep roots in England and most of my family can be found in just a few counties in the south of the country.

Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are where they lived with a few exceptions.

So given this they would appear to be the type of people who liked to stay close to home.

However they did migrate within England, family in Dorset and Wiltshire moved to Hampshire.

Some, in more recent times, also travelled further afield (one aunt emigrated after marrying an american soldier after WW2).

Southampton, my hometown, is one of the major UK ports.

More about its history can be found here http://www.plimsoll.org/ .

Living in a major port unsuprisingly some of my family had connections to the maritime trade. 
Some have visited places far across the seas as serving members of the merchant navy. 
My grandfather worked for the Royal Mail Steamship Company and travelled to South America. 
I also know that my uncle worked on the passenger liners, as I have in my possession his discharge books. 
What I had not realized is that now the records go up to the 1950's. He frequently sailed between Southampton and New York in the period now covered by the records.

So I entered his initial and surname, narrowed the search by first name and found him entering Ellis Island on the ship Queen Elizabeth. 
Because there was an index, below the image of the ships manifest, I noticed another person with the same surname. 
This second individual is a good match for my grandfather's brother as the first name and year of birth match and he is a British national.

If you want to try out the new passenger search here is the link 

 http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger .

You may be surprised and one of your family may have been recorded before it close 60 years ago.

I have also found my aunt and 2 of her children but they may not have actually passed through Ellis Island as this was in 1956.

Roots tourism

Apparently, my Ancestor Swap Challenge I proposed last month was a bit too daunting, as nobody has taken me up to the challenge yet. So instead, I will talk about an aspect of the worldwide genealogy industry that I find fascinating: roots tourism.

Living in a country from where many people emigrated over the centuries (the Netherlands), we get a lot of tourists looking for their roots. I have several clients for whom I have prepared visits, doing research beforehand to find out exactly where their ancestors lived. In some cases, they went there themselves and in other cases I doubled as their tour guide.

I always learn a lot from these trips, especially about my own preconceptions about what is 'normal' :-) Like the time I said "your ancestor lived in the third house" and the client responded "what do you mean, I only see one house?" She had never seen houses that don't have yards between them and did not realize that those houses shared a wall. She saw one house, where I saw twelve!

Roberta Estes and Cheryl Ferverda looking for their ancestors' graves in Baard, Friesland

I am currently working with the archives in Friesland, one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, to promote roots tourism. The Frisian archives are creating a 'roots package' for people of Frisian descent. They will research their immigrant ancestor's family tree back several generations and create a custom itinerary to show them where their ancestors lived. I participated in the trial last week, which was wonderful. An American client of mine, Roberta Estes, came over to see all the places I had found for her, together with her cousin Cheryl Ferverda. I wrote an impression about the first day of that trip on my blog.

Promoting roots tourism is pretty new in the Netherlands, but I think it has great potential. I know there are similar projects going on in Scotland and Ireland (the Homecoming, the Gathering). In Ireland, local historical societies were asked to reach out to the descendants of the people who left that area and to invite them to come back for a visit. It was a tremendous success. I think such a 'grassroots' approach would work very well in other countries of origin too.

Do you know of any other projects where people visited their places of origin? Do you know of any successful business models or marketing efforts? I would love to exchange ideas so please leave a comment or contact me via my website.

Yvette Hoitink, the Dutch Genealogist

As this is my first post, I will start by introducing myself. My name is Yvette Hoitink and I'm a professional genealogist from the Netherlands. I'll be blogging every fifth day of the month.

I decided to become a professional genealogist because I love solving complex family puzzles and don't care whether they are my own family or not. By charging for my services, I can afford to do genealogy several days per week instead of just in my spare time. Besides my genealogy business, I also work as a project manager in the IT department at the National Archives in The Hague and am a wife and mother of a three-year-old son.

I've been doing genealogy since I was 14 years old (I'll tell you how it all started in a future blog post). I've been researching a group of 6,000 emigrants from my father's home town of Winterswijk in Gelderland and the surrounding area, most of them distant cousins of mine one way or another. They left between 1840 and 1920 and settled mostly in the US, primarily in upstate New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. I've been able to find over 4,000 of them in US records and have been able to help many of their descendants make the connection between their immigrant ancestor and records in Europe. Several of them asked me if I took on paying clients. And one day, about two years ago, I decided to do just that. It's been an amazing adventure that allowed me to do research on Dutch ancestors of people from all over the world: United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Sweden and South Africa.

Graves of Winterswijk people in Clymer, New York

My main platform is my website, Dutch Genealogy. It started out over 20 years ago, as "Yvette's Dutch Genealogy Homepage," a collection of links to other websites that had information relevant to people researching their Dutch heritage. There weren't many websites out there at all so mine was the first genealogical website in the country. Soon afterwards, I was asked to give lectures about internet genealogy. Since I was just 18 years old at the time, this was pretty daunting but a great opportunity. It was funny too, to be a young girl in a scene dominated by retired men. "What do you mean you're the speaker? We invited an expert!" I also wrote a book about internet genealogy together with a friend, that has been reprinted several times. So you could say I've been a genealogy hustler for about 20 years, but now I've finally gone pro.

Groninger Archieven

There are not that many professional genealogists in the Netherlands. The other day, when I introduced myself as a professional genealogist to a staff member at an archive, he asked "people actually pay for that?" with genuine surprise in his voice. I can see where he came from, as most people in the Netherlands live pretty close to where their ancestors are from. If they are interested enough to hire someone, they are usually interested enough to do the research themselves. But my specialty is doing research for people who don't live in the Netherlands and don't speak Dutch. As there are way more non-Dutch speaking people looking for a genealogist to help them find their Dutch ancestors than Dutch genealogists willing and able to report in English, I've definitely found my niche.

I provide a range of services. Besides the 'classic' services like research, translation, lecturing and writing, I also help prepare clients' trips to the Netherlands. This usually involves researching the families to see where they lived and worshiped. I will then use that information to create an itinerary. The client can either visit all those places himself, or he can hire me as a tour guide. I've also accompanied clients to the archives, to present them with the original documents that include information about their ancestors. That is always a very special moment. I love all the information that is available online, but nothing beats the historical sensation of original manuscripts.

As one of the few professional genealogists in the country, it can get lonely sometimes. That's why I love meeting genealogists from other countries and sharing ideas. I am proud to be a member of this new worldwide community and hope to learn a lot from you. I also look forward to meeting some of you later this month at Who Do You Think You Are Live in London. If you see a woman that looks like that picture in the first paragraph, and who is carrying a "Dutch Genealogy" tote bag, please introduce yourself!

Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013

Who, What, When, Where and Why

For this month I am swapping days with Julie Goucher so here is the post for February 1.

Pondering on what to post next on this blog I thought of the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where and Why which will guide me in this and subsequent posts.

I told you a little about Who in my first post when I talked about myself. In this link ridden post I will talk about my ancestors and refer you to my family site and blog posts I have previously written about them.

My maternal grandparents were Ethel Jane Pusell and Frank Duncan  who met and married in Cobar NSW. Ethel's first ancestors to arrive in Australia were all convicts and Frank had quite a few as well as an Irish Famine Orphan.

Frank and Ethel 1948

My paternal grandparents Mary Tierney and Thomas William Curry whose ancestry was 100% Irish met and married in Canowindra NSW. My first Curry ancestor to arrive in Australia, Patrick Curry, was also a convict as was his wife Ellen/Eleanor Moore, the remainder came as free settlers under assisted passage schemes.

Mary and Tom 1948

There were no jumbo jets around when my ancestors came from England, Ireland and Scotland so they all had to endure long and challenging journeys by sea to reach the colonies. I have found reading the journals from the surgeons on of some of my ancestors' journeys most illuminating. I read about Patrick Curry's bouts of scurvy on his voyage on the Hooghley and of another ancestor's flogging. Holding these precious resources in my hands and reading their yellowed pages at the National Archives in the UK has been a highlight of my research.

Patrick Curry outlined in 1846 The Advantages of Immigration:
ADVANTAGES OF EMIGRATION. — StatementNo. 33. — Paddy Curry, Limerick- — NewSouth Wales, January 6, 1846.— I left mynative home in 1823, arrived in this country in1825. I was assigned to Messrs. James andWilliam Macarthur, and was five years beforeI got my liberty, then I married ; and whenthe youngsters gathered about me, Mr. Macar-thur gave me to cultivate 30 acres of land. Henever charged me any rent ; he made a sort ofa memorandum, but he never took a shillingfrom me. I take a load to Sydney now andthen— shear for him — job now and again ;well, when I was getting on well, my wifetakes sick, and really the Macarthurs behavedlike Christians to me. Mrs. Macarthur usedto come in her carriage to her, and eased hermind by telling her that it was nothing thechildren should want, and it's a true-wordedwoman she proved. Well, my wife died ofher fifth child, and after three years I marriedagain, and then Mr. Macarthur gave me a se-cond farm, and so I hold two, and it's not abetter farm he has on his estate. I get 30bushels of wheat to the acre— the weight isfrom 60 to 64 lbs. the bushel. I get about 50bushels of Indian corn to the acre— have had60. I have now in my barn 400 bushels ofwheat— plenty of corn— have above about 60head of cattle, 3 horses, 2 mares, 2 drays, acart, 1 plough, a new house, 36 feet by 16 ; se-veral out-buildings as you see — poultry inabundance. We consume one chest and a halfof tea in the year, 4 lbs. of sugar a day— nostint; I kill four bullocks in the year at thevery least, mostly five, besides pigs. I keeptwo men, pay them £18 a year, and theirboard, lodging, and tobacco. In the harvesttime I pay 5s. a day. I have reared a largefamily in comfort, want for nothing. Now,what I have say of the Macarthurs is this—there is no gentleman at home or abroad thatcould behave better: for twenty years I canspeak of them as masters and landlords— therecannot be better found ; their words are to betaken—you need not touch paper with them ;they seem to like me to get on; they ridethrough my farm, and are always willing toaccommodate me with a bullock or grain. Forthe two farms I pay 15s. an acre, on a 21 years'lease; it's five years getting to the 15s., atwhich it keeps. I had to clear it; but it is acheap farm, because the land is good—it is,you see, upon the banks of the river. Theyare Protestant gentlemen, but they are kind totheir Catholic servants and tenants. Indeed,when they had a good lot of government men,they kept a clerk that they allowed to readprayers for us ; indeed, I could not describe toyou the goodness of these gentlemen." —Douglas Jerrold's Paper.1848 'Advertising.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 8 June, p. 3, viewed 1 February, 2014, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12902254

As far as I can ascertain I am the first in my direct family lines to have left Australian shores since my ancestors arrived between 1812 and 1877. I think that they were pleased with conditions in The Lucky Country.

When I look at the charts above it seems as though I haven't done much work on my family tree but over the past 25 years or so I have connected with many distant cousins and discovered lots of stories about my ancestors and their families. And yet I have miles to go before I sleep as I continue to hunt for the Who, What, When, Where and Why of my family history.