This letter made me sit up and start to rethink some of my assumptions about passenger lists. NEVER even conceived that the records were not extant. Thought it might do the same for you so I asked Ken if I could forward it to the list and he said OK. Vicki -----Original Message----- From: Kenneth Tessendorff [SMTP:k.tessendorff@worldnet.att.net] Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 3:25 PM To: GEN-NYS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: GERMANS TO AMERICA/NEW YORK PASSENGER LISTS-UPDATE Hello, Thank you to the many list members who answered my question about the passenger lists in Germans to America. Perhaps the information below will be of help to some of you looking for New York passenger lists. I had emailed NARA and asked why they were unable to find the passenger lists from the date specified in Germans to America. They subsequently did a second search and were still unable to find the list. I also received an email message from the "chief of the unit which processes these requests." Her message included the following paragraphs: "The primary source for the "Germans to America" series is the passenger manifests of vessels arriving in the port of New York, 1820-1896, which the National Archives microfilmed in the 1970s. The original paper copies of the manifests were transferred to the Balch Institute for Immigration Studies in Philadelphia. The reason that the records were sent to Philadelphia is that the Balch was hoping to index them. As you know there are no name indexes for the arrivals in the port of New York for the period of 1847-1896. The Balch has published various indexes: Germans, Irish, and Italians, as a result of their efforts. However, the manifests are not the only source used to create the indexes. The project has used records of departures that exist in foreign archives to augment and supplement the Customs manifests. Having said this, I will admit that we are human and we are able to make mistakes. We have found that some of the manifests were not microfilmed in the 1970s. The existence of the paper copies in Philadelphia allows us to retrieve the missing manifests in those cases." She went on to suggest that I find the passenger lists myself by using microfilmed lists that are available at a variety of locations. Based on what I have learned so far, I have to draw the following conclusions: 1. The original (paper) passenger list I need may be at the Balch Institute for Immigration Studies in Philadelphia and may never have been filmed. The authors of Germans to America may have taken information related to my ancestors from these paper copies of the passenger lists. 2. The authors of Germans to America may have taken the information from "records of departures that exist in foreign archives to augment and supplement the Customs manifests." My understanding is that all the passenger lists for the port of Bremen have been destroyed. If there is some other source where the authors may have found the information, I would like to know what it might be. 3. Although the "existence of the paper copies in Philadelphia allows us to retrieve the missing manifests in those cases", I guess they don't intend to do that in my case. The lady made no mention of following up and requesting that the Balch "retrieve the missing manifests" and send the appropriate list to NARA. 4. According to their web site, the Balch will not check their lists for researchers, so there is no way I can verify that they have the paper list dated 8 Sep 1871 for the ship HANSA from Bremen to New York. 5. Other information I have leads me to suspect that my ancestors may actually have arrived in the US a number of months before Sep 1871. If I am correct, than the authors of Germans to America may have erred on the date. However, there seems to be no way to get in touch with them to verify that they have published the information correctly. Action plan. I will first check "Registers of Vessels Arriving at the Port of New York from Foreign Ports, 1789 - 1919" to see when the HANSA arrived in New York from Bremen. Then I will order the appropriate rolls of passenger list film from the LDS and see if they appear anywhere in those listings. Of course, this plan of attack is based on the theory that there actually was a ship named HANSA that transported passengers from Bremen to New York and may have arrived at some time in 1871. I guess the only other approach is to do a line by line search of all the ships that arrived in New York during 1871. Having already done this for several years of New Orleans lists, I am afraid that I might go blind in the process. ;-) I don't know whether the information included above is good news or bad news for anyone else that might be having similar problems finding a passenger list for their ancestors, but perhaps there is something here that may help. Any additional comments or instructions will be appreciated. Ken T. ______________________________