A word of caution. My experience is that Ancestry still does not offer the
entire Ellis Island database--either that or their indexing has problems.

To be thorough, I'd suggest going directly to ellisisland.org and/or using
the excellent Steve Morse search engines available at
http://www.stevemorse.org/.

I wasted many hours on Ancestry before I discovered this flaw--remarkable,
since I would have thought that they could have implemented access using the
same technology as Steve Morse. And I just checked: Lipot Lowe is retrieved
instantly on the ellisisland.org site and is not found at ancestry.com, so
the problem continues.

Ancestry does offer one great advanatage, however. it's "viewer" is
excellent, has some really nice options, and navigation of the films is far
superior to Ellis Island's site.

The bottom line is that ALL of these resources are valuable in searching
these records.

And to echo Marian's point, one must use a lot of creativity in searching.
The manifest names are often transliterations, the people who indexed them
often made errors or judgements that interfere with searching, the first
names are often inconsistent with the American names our ancestors adopted
after arriving here. In my family's case, some first names were really odd
spellings of Yiddish names--impossible to decipher without knowing the
Yiddish name, first. As an ancestor might have said, "You've got to be a
reg'lar Sherlock Holmes to solve these mysteries!"

Regards,

Steve Low
Lincoln, MA

Researching:

LOW >from Satu Mare/Seini, Romania (i.e., Szatmar/Szinervaraljá, Hungary) to
New York

SCHWARTZ >from Halmeu, Romania (I.e., Halmi, Hungary) to New York

WITTNER >from Iasi, Romania to New York; Manchester, England; Australia

LANDO/LANDA/LANDAU >from Kiliya, Ukraine and Kishinev, Moldova to New York
and Palestine

Everyone should be aware that C, S, and L are sometimes mistaken for
each other in cursive handwriting. Always good to try different
things when searching , especially using Steve Morse's one-step website.

Diane Jacobs
Somerset, NJ


Subject: [h-sig] Passenger Lists - Persist!

With free access to passsenger lists on Ancestry this month, I have
spent many hours searching the manifests, page by page, name by name,
and I want to share my experiences.

Looking for my great-grandparents, Rosa and Adolph Lissauer, and their
children who immigrated in 1887, I finally found them as Rosa and Adr
Cirzomer. The "L" in Lissauer was written as a lower case letter and
was magically transformed into a "C" --- The names and ages of the
children were also wierd but somewhat recognizable.

Then, I decided to look for my other great-grandmother, whose manifest I
possess. Her name was Marie Huebschman and Ancestry listed her as Marie
Rubschmann. The children were noted as Tom, a female, written Toni;
Rees, written Resi, and another Marie, very clearly written as Minna.

SO -- even though the index to these records has many, many
inaccuracies, don't give up. When I began, all I really knew was
approximate years of immigration.

Marian Brown
Cincinnati, OH

With free access to passsenger lists on Ancestry this month, I have
spent many hours searching the manifests, page by page, name by name,
and I want to share my experiences.

Looking for my great-grandparents, Rosa and Adolph Lissauer, and their
children who immigrated in 1887, I finally found them as Rosa and Adr
Cirzomer. The "L" in Lissauer was written as a lower case letter and
was magically transformed into a "C" --- The names and ages of the
children were also wierd but somewhat recognizable.

Then, I decided to look for my other great-grandmother, whose manifest I
possess. Her name was Marie Huebschman and Ancestry listed her as Marie
Rubschmann. The children were noted as Tom, a female, written Toni;
Rees, written Resi, and another Marie, very clearly written as Minna.

SO -- even though the index to these records has many, many
inaccuracies, don't give up. When I began, all I really knew was
approximate years of immigration.

Marian Brown
Cincinnati, OH