Paul,

I have had the opportunity to review the St. Alban's films and can tell
you a bit about them.

1) There are two overall sections of microfilm. One has the soundex
index, which has lots of information on its own, and is also the key to
finding what you want on the other part. The other section has the
actual passenger manifests, which are sometimes ships and sometimes
trains, etc.

2) First you will need to find the soundex film that covers the part of
the alphabet you are searching for. The surnames are arranged by
soundex code, and then the first names are alphabetical within soundex
code. The soundex will tell you (a) WHEN this person came across the
border, (b) WHERE this person came across the border, and (c) which
microfilm and section you need to view to find the actual passenger
manifest entry.

3) Once you find the right passenger manifest film, finding the actual
page you want can be tricky. It took me some time to figure out just
where the actual page number was. Once I figured that out (took LOTS of
cranking to figure it out), then I found the actual page with little to
to problem at all. So, if anybody else can offer some pointers about
what part of the film to look at to find the right page numbers, that
would help [unfortunately I don't remember now].

4) You will of course find both the soundex index and the passenger
manifests in Salt Lake City; that's where I was when I viewed them --
and yes, I did find proof that my grandfather crossed through the U.S.
on his way >from Montreal to Cuba.

5) You will also find the soundex index films at the New England
Historical and Genealogical Society Library in Boston; I would imagine
that if they have the soundex, they probably have the manifests as well.

6) They are not online anywhere that I know of, but a guide that tells
you which soundex index film number you want can be found at the LDS
website via the Family History Catalog.

I'm sure there must be other libraries that carry this set of films; you
mentioned the New York Public Library and perhaps there are others as
well.

But I must admit that I am confused by one thing with regard to these
films. I found my husband's great-grandfather on one passenger manifest
for one of the ships, and I also think I found the rest of the family on
another manifest about a year later. What I do not know however is if
what I was looking at was the recording of a ship landing at the Port of
Quebec, where all passengers then headed south for the U.S., or whether
what I was seeing was just a fraction of the true passenger list,
recording only those passengers that chose to travel further south to
the U.S. [In other words, I don't know if somewhere there might be yet
another passenger manifest that records the actual arrival of my
husband's family in the Port of Quebec >from the foreign port.]

Good luck in your search,
Mary D. Taffet


Paul Concus wrote: