Dear Shirley and Genners,

In the case of the United States, the US Government printed the
passenger lists and distributed them to all ship-owners. Any ship
whose journey included a stop in a port in the United States would
have had the purser of the ship fill in the list at the ports of
embarkation. Hence, a ship departing Hamburg and stopping en-route at
L'Havre and Southampton, the purser would have listed all the
passengers embarking at all four ports. This is why the lists are
printed in English.

As well as "Ellis Island" (for the Port of New York), these lists
(and later indexes) exist pretty much for all US ports and are
available at the National Archives in Washington DC. The eleven
regional National Archives hold copies of the lists that pertain to
the Archive's regional area of interest.

The Mormons have also microfilmed many of these records and so it is
worth checking the LDS catalog (www.familysearch.org).

As always a good place to learn about passenger lists is at the
JewishGen FAQs (good for learning about anything to do with
genealogy). Go to:

http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/faq.html#Passenger

for more information.

But in a nutshell, any passenger whose processing was, in any way out
of the ordinary, that is, they were held back for some reason, would
be listed at the back of the lists.

Hence, in the case of Ena Jacobs enquiry of her relative Sara
Festenstein, who may have traveled with her sister Esther Greenblatt
(and possibly died en-route), one can see on page 93 of the lists,
the page entitled "Record of Detained Aliens" for the Majestic, that
"ESTER GRINBLATT" and her three children were detained on the 12th,
the day of arrival (were given dinner!) and were released to her
husband Chaim at 12:50 pm on the 13th September.

What was interesting to note was that the NYC street address she gave
for her husband was not the one he gave the authorities when he
picked her up the next day.

Any passenger who did not sail had their entry crossed through.

Sorry to go on for so long, but as Ena's cousin, I too have been
burning the midnight LCDs trying to find an answer for her. This
really seems like a case where the family story doesn't jive with the
facts - so far!

--
Jeremy G Frankel
ex Edgware, London, England
Berkeley, California, USA

EBIN: Russia -> New York, USA
FRANKEL: Poland -> London, England
GOLD (RATH): Praszka, Poland -> London, England
KOENIGSBERG: Vilkaviskis, Lithuania -> London, England -> NYC, NY, USA
LEVY (later LEADER): Kalisz, Poland -> London, England
PRINCZ/PRINCE: Krakow, Poland -> London, England -> NYC, NY, USA