Hello List, Many of you have probably come across a case like this one, but I'll post it to illustrate some challenges I've had with passenger-list data. This is a page from a voyage on the SS Cymric, leaving Liverpool 1912Aug17 arriving Boston 1912Sep5. http://search.ancestry.com/iexec?htx=View&r=an&dbid=8745&iid=MAT843_183-0212&fn=Julia&ln=Plunkett&st=r&ssrc=&pid=1589587 Sorry, but I can't find this voyage at Familysearch.org First, notice all the "do" meaning "ditto" entries on the page. The recorder was obviously allowed to use this shorthand freely, and in this case did so. It might have been used especially when the recorder was in a hurry, which would make errors more likely, resulting in a piece of information being erroneously recorded as the same as that on the line above. Now notice lines 21 and 22: "Plunkett Kathleen, do Julia." These are my ancestors. Julia Plunkett was born in Kingstown, Co. Dublin in 1888, the daughter of Andrew Plunkett, who died two weeks after Julia was born. Julia's mother later married John Carey, and their daughter Kathleen Carey was born in 1892. Kathleen was in fact Kathleen Carey, not Kathleen Plunkett. And in the "nearest relative" column (11) Kathleen's father is falsely listed as "John Plunkett." I've come to believe that these Plunketts and Careys often used whichever surname they thought would create the fewest questions from officials. Julia and Kathleen were bound for Julia's brother Thomas Plunkett's home in Lowell, MA (col. 18). I've wondered if Kathleen decided to use the Plunkett surname just to make sure it was clear that she was heading to a close relative already resident in the US. Could there be another explanation for her not using her birth surname? I've also been told that some (perhaps many?) Irish people were accustomed to giving false information to authorities out of an abundance of caution and a fear of official malfeasance. Surely some of them carried this practice/secretiveness with them as they traveled away from Ireland. An example I've been given is a person's claiming to the Irish census-taker/collector that she did not read or write, when in fact she did. Does anyone know how an older passenger list was prepared? Was it usually made on land beforehand, perhaps when the booking was made? Or was it made as passengers boarded the ship prior to departure or even after departure? Some time ago I asked the Ellis Island people what a black line through a passenger-list entry meant. I was told that it meant the passenger did not make the voyage. That would suggest that the list was prepared beforehand. I've just sent an email to historycenter@ellisisland.org asking for information about the process. PJ, in Texs