In a message dated 12/23/2008 9:27:31 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jfrankel@... writes:
Eventually I discovered that when
ships came into the port of New York City, the manifests were split
up, with the pages for the first and second class passengers going
with the ship to dock at a pier while the manifest for the third
class and steerage class passengers went with them on the barge to
Ellis Island.

--
It might be true that the lists were separated at one period of time but I
have found many first class passengers on the Ellis Island passenger lists. I
have used Ancestry to search the New York arrivals and I can see my family
going back and forth to Europe and even on some cruises >from the early 1900s
into the 1930s and they were not sailing steerage. As a matter of fact with
the Ancestry lists going to the 1950s I can see my family sailings all the way
up to the late 1950s and track my grandmother's yearly vacations to Europe.

Allan Jordan