GERMANS TO AMERICA Volume 1 January 1850-May 1851 Courtesy ofPeabody Museum of Salem. BORUSSIA, built in 1855 at Greennock, Scotland, and owned by the Hamburg American Line. GERMANS TO AMERICA Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, 1850-1855 Volume 1 January 1850-May 1851 Edited by Ira A. Glazier and P. William Filby Scholarly Resources Inc. SR Wilmington, Delaware TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for permanence of paper for printed library materials, Z39.48, 1984. © 1988 by Scholarly Resources Inc. All rights reserved First printed 1988 Printed and bound in the United States of America Scholarly Resources Inc. 104 Greenhill Avenue Wilmington, Delaware 19805-1897 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Germans to America: lists of passengers arriving at U.S. ports / edited by Ira A. Glazier, P. William Filby. p. cm. Includes indexes. Contents: [1] 1850-1855. ISBN 0-8420-2279-1 (v. 1) : $75.00 (per vol.) 1. German Americans-Genealogy. 2. Ships-United States-Passenger lists. 3. United States-Emigration and immigration. 4. Immigrants-United States-Registers. 5. Germany-Emigration and immigration. I. Glazier, Ira A. II. Filby, P. William, 1911- E184.G3G38 1988 87-35442 929'.3'08931-dc19 CIP GONJTEOTS Foreword by P. William Filby vii Introduction by Ira A. Glazier ix Lists of Codes Occupations xv Provinces or Countries xix Villages xxi Destinations xxix Key xxxi Passenger Lists 1 Index 525 This page intentionally left blank FOREWORD As a speaker at many major genealogical conferences, I am aware of the enormous interest in German immigration, particularly after 1840. Most of the questions at these conferences and in my correspondence concern the search for German immigrants. About 4 million Germans came to the United States between 1850 and 1895. Although they are recorded in the National Archives, their names remain unindexed and therefore unfindable unless the researcher knows the ship on which the person arrived and the exact date of arrival. What has been needed is a list of immigrants, arranged first by ship at the port of debarkation and then indexed by family name. The original passenger lists for 1850 through 1855, prepared by shipping agents and ships' officers, are now deposited at the Temple-Balch Center for Immigration Research in Philadelphia and are reproduced in these volumes by ship and date of arrival. This arrangement will greatly aid genealogical researchers as will the volume-by-volume index. Why was there such a great mass of people wishing to quit their homeland for the unknown United States? Emigration from Germany was spurred by a variety of factors, including crop failures, a lack of industrial employment, overpopulation, social discontent and polit- ical repression and upheaval, as well as the lure of cheap land and the chance to make a fresh start in a new country. The lists, starting from 1850, were chosen for publication because that year begins a period when immigration to the United States was swelling, touched off by the departure of political refugees, liberals, and intellectuals and by stories about a better life sent back by those who had emigrated previously. Most of the vii immigrants found the trip worthwhile, and few returned to Germany. The two main German ports of embarkation were Bremen and Hamburg, where German officials prepared lists of emigrants. For various reasons, the Bremen lists have been destroyed or otherwise made unavailable, but, since the lists reproduced here record arrivals in all U.S. ports, the loss of the Bremen lists does not present as serious a problem as it might be otherwise. The great majority of immigrants came to New York, but many went to New Orleans and Baltimore, with fewer going to Boston and Philadelphia. This first series, covering 1850 to 1855, lists over 700,000 German immigrants to the United States and thus provides a significant new resource for genealogical research for the middle years of the nineteenth century. P. William Filby Former director, Maryland Historical Society Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, London Fellow of the National Genealogical Society viii INTRODUCTION Germans to America provides both the historian and the genealogist with an extensive data base of German immigrants who came to the United States from 1850 through 1855. This data base derives from the original ship manifest schedules, currently housed at the Temple-Balch Center for Immigration Research. These schedules were filed by all vessels entering U.S. ports in accordance with the act of Congress of 1819. The lists reproduced in this volume in chronological order by date of arrival contain a minimum of 80 percent German surnames and are published in their entirety. According to the act of 1819, lists of all passengers were to be delivered upon arrival to the local collector of customs, who made copies that were then transmitted to the secretary of state and subsequently reported to Congress.1 The secretary of state also published quarterly and annual summaries under the title of Statement of the Number and Description of Passengers Arriving in the United States between 1820 and 1870. These reports were later published by the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department from 1867 to 1895 and by the Office of Immigration, now the Immigration and Naturalization Service, after 1895. The passenger lists make possible a detailed reconstruction of the movement of population from the major sender countries, in the present case the German states, by including information on the age, sex, occupation, and nationality of each passenger and residence and putative destination. Analysis of this information enables the researcher to identify U.S. citizens returning to their country of origin, persons transitting the United States, and immigrants. The ix