I'm grateful to all those who posted such fascinating and varied
reasons why emigrants/immigrants changed their surnames. Some of
the possibilities were enirely new, and several opened possibilities
to account for my own situation.

However....

I wonder if a new thread may not be as valuable to us all. It's
been said endlessly that the Port of Hamburg, along with the
Hamburg-Amerika Line, dominated the emigration trade during the
great tide (1885-1914). Most of the boats dumped the tired and
wretched of Europe's shores in NYC.

Still there were other ports and other lines, especially after
WWII (1917).

Could others submit correlations between _known_ departure ports
and arrival ports in the U.S.?
Include the individual's country/area of origin.
Also the shipping line, if known, and date.
And the port of entry.

The value of this exercise is really to be realized by those who
simply can't locate a relative on an NYC Passenger List.

Should enough replies be posted, the results would suggest likely
alternative ports.

For example, did XYZ line from, say, Amsterdam, tend to dock in
Baltimore?
Or did folk who walked to France tend to land in Philadelphia?

In one known case, relatives had to wait in Cuba for five years
until their quota number "came up." (This was in the 1930s.)
Their entry was through a small Florida port, and the Passenger
List was lumped in with other Florida ports on an NARA microfilm.

The value of this insight is that it provided a new possibility
for those frustrated by the endless readings of the NYC Lists.

For example:

Grodno > Hamburg > NYC. 1888. Hamburg-Amerika Line. Found in NYC
Passenger Lists.
Novograd-Volhynia (near Kiev) > Baltimore > Cleveland. 1903.
(Can't recall line just now.) Found in Baltimore Index to Passenger
Lists. (The value here was that there was a Baltimore-Ohio R.R.,
which took the strain off the Port of NYC and offered fewer transfers.)

* * * * *

Did you know that the NARA web site lists Passenger Lists for around
118 ports of entry? Some are indexed, though not many. (There are both
an index listing and an unindexed port listing.)


Jack R. Braverman
-----------------

MODERATOR NOTE:
What an absolutely excellent idea!
If enough send in such information I will be willing to collect it
and put it on the Belarus SIG Online Newsletter! I think it would
be most useful -- in many ways.

So to all those who (hopefully!!) will send in such information:
Please send it to tbe Belarus Discussion Group with a copy to me:
mailto:elsebeth@paikin.dk

P.S.
One often overlooked possibility is the migration through
Denmark! Within a few years it is estimated that more than
10,000 migrated via Denmark -- and therefore might be found
in the Danish online searchable passenger lists database!

Best regards

Elsebeth Paikin, Copenhagen, Denmark
Moderator of the Belarus SIG, Denmark SIG
and Ekaterinoslav Discussion Groups
as well as
Coordinator & Webmaster of JewishGen Denmark SIG http://www.jewishgen.org/denmark
http://home.worldonline.dk/~epaikin/
mailto:elsebeth@paikin.dk
-----------------------------------

"Jack R. Braverman" wrote:

However....

I wonder if a new thread may not be as valuable to us all. It's
been said endlessly that the Port of Hamburg, along with the
Hamburg-Amerika Line, dominated the emigration trade during the
great tide (1885-1914). Most of the boats dumped the tired and
wretched of Europe's shores in NYC.

I will add one Port based only upon Declarations of Intent
1906 - Antwerp to NYC - gf >from Kovno, Lithuania -- Red Star Line
1910 - Antwerp to NYC - gf >from Bobruisk, Belarus

I suspect that the trip to Antwerp was over land.

Len Farber
lhfarber@mediaone.net
Oak Park, Illinois

Jack:

I concur with Ms. Paikin. An excellent idea!

Here is my story. I knew my grandmother had lived in Norfolk, Virginia
(my mother's birthplace) but little else. I asked my grandmother, 90
years old at the time, where and when she had come to America (she is
now 95).
Well, she sometimes cannot remember breakfast but didn't take 3 seconds
before answering, "August 1, 1921, Hamburg-Amerika Line." She had
traveled alone >from Bialystok, Poland to Hamburg, Germany.

She didn't remember the name of the ship and there was no listing for
Norfolk arrivals at my local FHM. Had she come through Baltimore?
No, she was certain, Hamburg to Norfolk with no stops. So what to do?

I checked Morton's Directory of ship arrivals for NYC. Only two on
August 2, 1921 for the Hamburg line. Checking the microfilm for the
Hamburg-Amerika Line manifests I found one for one of the ships, the
Mount Carroll. And there, listed as passenger #69, was my grandmother,
Sora Uddis Pejlatowicz, aged 15. She had indeed landed in Norfolk on
August 1 and the ship had continued on to NYC for the return trip to
Germany. The trip lasted 3 weeks.

By the way, my mother's father arrived with his parents and siblings
in Baltimore on December 22, 1912 aboard the S.S. Barbarossa, North
German Lloyd Line.

I know I backed into this, but there are certainly arrival records for
Norfolk somewhere.

Mark Spiegel
wysiwig@earthlink.net

Greetings:

In 1922-23 my father, his sister and her husband and others followed this
route:
Bremen - Buenos Aires (where they had to wait several months) - NYC.

The ship was the SS Vestris. It changed ownership several times and I'm not
sure of the owner at that time.

Michelle Frager
NYC

Searching:
***BELARUS (Grodno, Bobruisk, Hlusk, Kaslovich): FRAKT, WOLFSON, PADOVSCHIK, LIFSHITZ, SHAPIRO, DINABURSKY
***UKRAINE Podolia (Mogilov-Podolski, Snitkov, Zmerinka, Zamekov, Liadova,
Vinkivtsi): FRAGER/TRAGER, SEROTA, ZECKSER, SCHWEISBERG, BASSUK, TRACHTENBERG

My father started from: Kopaigorod, Volhin, Ukraine, somehow took the
T.S.S. Kroonland, Red Star Line, >from Antwerp to Ellis Island in 1913.
Thanks. Yale

Searching:SEDMAN/SEIDMAN/WERETA/KOIFMAN (Kopaygorod, Ukraine); GITLIN,
SHULMAN (Minsk, Belarus).

Let's remember that a lot of Jews chose, for some reason, to enter
the U.S. via Canada. Many of these people went to Chicago. I
understand that this route was popular for some reason -- maybe
the expense, maybe to avoid more stringent medical examination at
Ellis Island?

My great-grandfather Barney PUSSEL and his parents and probably
sister, left Vitebsk for England, where they lived for a couple
of years. This would have been around the late 1890's, perhaps
1898. I don't know the port of departure. In 1901, when Barney
was about 19, he and his mother travelled >from Liverpool to Halifax
on their way to Chicago to join his father, arriving on the ship
Lake Ontario of the Beaver Line. There were a number of Russian
passengers on the ship headed for America, presumably Jews.

Barney had lost one eye as a child and, according to his own
account, had broken his back a year or two previously in England.
So I imagine him strapped into his coat and making his way past
the health officer, whose report mentions the blind eye but not
the spine problem.

I don't yet know how Barney's father came to America, but I encourage
searchers who can't find their people in the New York passenger lists
to check out the St. Alban's List and to watch out for spelling
variations therein.

Andrea Vangor
PUSSEL/BUSSHELL, FEIGELSON >from Vitebsk