How to search Ellis Island records and find the right passenger

Ellis Island records are the passenger lists of the ships that brought immigrants to New York, and for most American families they hold the line that shows a grandparent arriving. The lists are free to search. The hard part is finding the right line: each name was written by a clerk in Europe, read again by an indexer a century later, and may be spelled several ways in between.

This guide sets out where the records are and which years they cover, how to search when the name is misspelled, what both pages of a manifest say, and how to be sure that the passenger you found is your own. The method is the same for Jewish, Italian, Irish, Greek and every other family that came through New York.

What the Ellis Island records are

A ship arriving at New York carried lists of every passenger aboard, prepared at the port where they had embarked. Passengers in steerage were taken by ferry to Ellis Island, where an inspector questioned each one against the line on the list, while passengers in first and second class were usually inspected aboard the ship. The government kept the lists, and those lists are what families mean today by Ellis Island records.

The station opened on January 1, 1892, and the National Park Service counts more than 12 million immigrants processed there. A fire destroyed the first wooden buildings in June 1897, and arrivals were inspected at the Barge Office in Manhattan until the new station opened in December 1900. After the laws of the early 1920s cut immigration sharply, far fewer people passed through, and the station closed in November 1954. Before Ellis Island, New York's immigrants landed at Castle Garden, at the southern tip of Manhattan, from 1855 to 1890.

Where the records are, and which are free

The Foundation's collection grew by half in 2026 and is still being extended to more ports, so check its search for a port beyond New York before looking elsewhere.

Which years the records cover, and what each gives

Federal law first required ship captains to hand in passenger lists on January 1, 1820, so the National Archives has almost no lists of earlier arrivals. From 1820 the New York lists survive with some gaps, and what a list says depends on its year. The early lists give little more than a name, an age, an occupation and a country. From 1893 the forms grew, and each change added something a family can use.

From the National Park Service and the US National Archives, checked October 2026.

For a Jewish family the lists of 1907 to 1924, the last years of the great migration from Eastern Europe, are usually the richest. They name the town twice, as the last residence and as the place of birth, and they give a relative at home and a relative in America. Together those lines often lead straight to the family's town, and to cousins on both sides of the ocean.

How to search Ellis Island records, step by step

Before searching, write down what you know: the name in every form the family used, the year of arrival as each record gives it, the age, the town as the family said it, and who came together. The censuses of 1900 to 1930 asked each immigrant's year of arrival, and a naturalization file begun after 1906 usually gives the ship and the date. With those in hand, the search is far quicker.

1. Search the surname with the year of arrival as a range of about five years either side, and the age at arrival as a range.
2. Read down every result, and open the image of the list for any passenger whose age and year are close, since the typed line can be wrong.
3. Search every spelling of the surname and of the given name, including the Yiddish or European form of the given name.
4. Add the town of last residence in its German, Polish and Yiddish spellings, to narrow a common surname.
5. Search for the people who came with the passenger, such as a wife or a child, whose names may have been written more clearly.
6. Read both pages of the manifest, and the lists of detained passengers filed with the ship's list if there is a mark beside the name.
7. Test the passenger against at least two facts you already hold, such as the age and the relative in America.
8. Write down the ship, the date of arrival, the page and the line number, so that you or anyone else can find the list again.

Searching for a misspelled name

Most passengers who cannot be found are there under another spelling. The list was usually begun when the ticket was bought, by an agent of the shipping line who wrote the name as he heard it, often in German spelling, for a passenger who may have known it only in Yiddish or Russian letters. A century later a volunteer read that handwriting to make the index. Each step was a chance for a letter to change.

Given names change more than surnames. A man called Hershel at home may be Hirsch on the list, Herschel in the index and Harry on the census. A woman may be listed under her own surname or her husband's, with a Yiddish form of her given name such as Chaje or Sore. Search a married woman under both surnames. Search children under their mother's surname as well, since the papers of children whose parents had only a religious marriage were often in her name. Ages were given loosely, so allow five years either way.

The same caution applies to every family. The Foundation's own advice is to search the name as it was spelled at home, Giuseppe for Joseph and Zsuzsanna for Susan.

Searching by town

The town of last residence is often the best way to tell one Moische Goldberg from another. Spell it as a German or Polish clerk would have: Lodz or Lodsch for Łódź, Warschau for Warsaw, Wilna for Vilna, Brest Litowsk for the town Jews called Brisk. A clerk might also write the province, such as Kowno or Grodno, or only the country. Russia on a list of these years usually means the Russian Empire, which then included most of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, and Austria often means Galicia.

Jewish passengers on the lists

Most Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe sailed from Hamburg or Bremen, and others from Rotterdam, Antwerp or Liverpool. From 1903 the column for race or people usually reads Hebrew, while the nationality column gives the country, such as Russian or Austrian, so a search for Jewish passengers from one town in one year can be made by reading down the lists of a ship. From 1904 HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, kept an office on the island, and its staff spoke for Jewish passengers held for a hearing and searched for relatives who could vouch for them.

Reading the manifest: both pages

From 1907 each passenger's line runs across two facing pages, filmed as two separate images. Read across on the same line number. The first page says who the passenger was and where he came from; the second says where he was going and where he was born.

Marks in the margins

Most manifests carry later writing across the columns. Numbers and dates written in the occupation column usually date from 1926 or later, when the immigrant applied to naturalize and the government checked the arrival, so they show that a naturalization file was opened about that date. A mark beside a name can mean the passenger was held, and the record of detained passengers and the lists of those held for a special inquiry, filed with the ship's list, say more. Marian L. Smith, the historian of the immigration service, explains each kind of mark in a guide to manifest markings published by JewishGen.

Were names changed at Ellis Island?

Almost never. The history office of US Citizenship and Immigration Services explains that the lists were made abroad, usually when the ticket was bought, and inspectors at Ellis Island worked from them. They were not to change a name or any detail unless the immigrant asked, or the inspection showed the list was wrong. Inspectors were assigned by the languages they spoke, and interpreters worked on the island, so few passengers went unheard.

Most changes came later and by choice, as a new spelling at school or at work or a shorter name for a business, and many were made official at naturalization. Since 1906 the naturalization papers have recorded a change, so the naturalization file is often the first paper that shows both names, while the passenger list carries the old one. In the example on this site, a 1955 naturalization certificate records a change from Natan to Nathan, nearly six years after the man landed in New York. Jewish last names shows that record and sets out the common patterns.

How to check that the passenger is yours

A common name and a common age can belong to several people in the same year's lists. A passenger is yours when the facts that matter agree with records made at other times for other purposes. Compare each column with what you already know.

Two facts that agree, from records made independently, make a strong case. One fact that clearly disagrees, such as a different father or a wife with another name, usually means a different person. How to check that a record really belongs to your family sets out the method, and tells how the example withdrew a birth entry that an index had read as Tarko where the register reads Marko.

Arrivals before Ellis Island, and at other ports

Families who arrived before 1892 landed at Castle Garden, New York's immigrant depot at the Battery from 1855 to 1890, or at the Barge Office nearby in 1890 and 1891. Their lists are part of the same New York collection that begins in 1820, and they say less: usually a name, an age, an occupation and a country, without a town. For these arrivals the census and the naturalization papers carry more of the search.

Not every immigrant came through New York. Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia received many ships from Bremen and Liverpool, and between 1907 and 1914 about ten thousand Jewish immigrants landed at Galveston, Texas, under a plan that brought them from Bremen to settle in the interior of the country. The National Archives keeps the lists of each port, arranged by port of arrival, and FamilySearch and Ancestry hold many of them.

Others came by way of Canada, a route the shipping lines promoted because it avoided the stricter rules and the delays of American ports. From 1895 American inspectors at Canadian seaports listed the passengers bound for the United States. Those lists, with later records of crossings by land, are held by the National Archives and known as the St. Albans lists, from 1895 to 1954.

When the passenger cannot be found

When a passenger seems to be missing, the cause is usually one of these:

• The year is wrong. Census years of arrival are often a few years off, and family memory can be further.
• The name was misread in the index. Search the second index, and add the town.
• The passenger landed at another port, or came through Canada.
• The passenger was a child listed under a parent's other surname, or a wife under her own.
• The passenger came before 1892, when the lists rarely give a town.

When the search stalls, the naturalization file usually settles it. From 1906 the papers give the ship and the date of arrival, and the certificate of arrival in a later file was made by checking the passenger list itself. How to trace your ancestry explains how to request the file.

Where the passenger list leads

A passenger list is usually where the American records end and the family's European story begins. The town and the relative left behind point to registers in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary or Germany, and how to find the town your family came from shows how to fix that town in every spelling. How to trace your ancestry places the lists among the other American records. More guides are in finding family records.

Some of these records can be searched from home. Others are held by archives that answer only written requests, in Polish, German, Russian or Yiddish, and some files have never been indexed at all. A Zichronos commission includes that work and its archive, copy and translation fees, and ends in a finished book. How the example was researched follows that work from the first papers to the printed volumes, the examples page shows what a finished book holds, what a family history book costs compares the options, and How we work sets out the steps.

Sources: the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation on its arrival records; the US National Archives on passenger arrival records, and Marian L. Smith in its Prologue magazine on arrivals by way of Canada; the National Park Service on what passenger lists record and on the history of the station; the history office of US Citizenship and Immigration Services on immigrant name changes; JewishGen's guide to manifest markings; the Texas State Historical Association on the Galveston Movement; the American Jewish Historical Society on the history of HIAS. Checked October 2026.