Hi Sarah, the truth is, alas, it is impossible to know the whole truth about shipping in the 1700s. There are very few records. No records means we don't know. We don't even have the names of the ships that were plying the seas then. The ports were entirely different. THings began to shift in the early 1800s so by the Famine large steam ships had largely replaced the smaller sailing ships and people were having to go to the few larger ports that could 'service' them, via ferries and trains. Agnew wrote a book on Belfast merchant families. She is a scholar so her sources are identified. The genealogy of the families is not indexed in her book but is in the archives of this list. You can learn a lot about Belfast shipping in the 1600s from this book. In any case from her book you realize that much shipping happened at very tiny ports. There was no reason for people to go to Dublin, Belfast, or Liverpool. The ships were small and often were hopscotching around the coast stopping at any small harbor. Many people left from Larne, for example, and Derry, and ports on the west coast. The same ships would pause along the coast of Scotland to unload a box or two and pick up a person or two. The same was occuring 100 years later when in the 1770s the British Gov first did a study to see who was leaving. They found it impossible to record all emigrants because the ships stopped at so many places. They couldn't have an official at all the stopping places to record who got on. THis is in another book whose name escapes me right now. The man wrote a couple books on American immigration. Also Kirby Miller's book on Irish emigration is usually considered the definitive work. He covers the later years, the 1800s better because that is when we got more records. There were no passenger ships. People rode on boats that hauled cargo. From what I have read they got on board what was available and went wherever it went, hoofing it to their final destination. So some German ancestors of mine landed in 1834 in Baltimore, which at the time was the 2nd largest port after New York (so many ships went there), and rode in covered wagons to north of Pittsburgh. Not the route 'common sense' would suggest <grin>! We had been searching New York and Phillie Passenger lists.... Most people who came in the 1700s are not named in any immigration document and or non-existence ship list. Spending eons trying to find the ship the ancestor came in will not end in success unless you are 1. lucky, and 2. study how to do this kind of research and execute intelligent strategies. Somewhere I read that the past is a foreign place. So true!!! Yet we have this notion of people traveling to a major port and getting a ticket to New York, leaving behind white churches with bell towers. Hmmm.... In the 1700s Presbyterianism was illegal. They didn't have nice white churches. They met in homes and open fields and occassionally a sod house or barn, just like they did when they went down to the local harbor and boarded a tiny cargo ship for 15 ports in Scotland and Ireland before they topped off the fresh water in Cork and attempted the Atlantic crossing. My ancestors were on a ship that left Ireland in 1729. One family member was an inveterate diarist and he wrote down everything. So we know it stopped at every indent in the Irish coastline, picking up and dropping off, and finally left from Cork, like apparently most did. Though by that time measles had broken out and a third of them died in the crossing including five family members. We only know about that because the future Rev. Charles Clinton Beattie was on board. Most ships didn't have a Charlie Beattie. This ship was bound for New York but after a hideous crossing, they ran short of supplies and docked at P'town in Cape Cod, where the captain tried to extort more money from the passengers who wanted to continue on to New York. The surviving members of my family got off, spent the winter in P'Town entertaining with the Irish harp (they were gentry, not po' folk), and then continued on to the Newburgh area. ALl of which we only know because of Charlie Beattie. It was different then and due to trade winds and bad luck, you didn't always end up where you planned. The really poor came over as indentured servants. The ones in most demand were skilled laborers, which favored Irish Protestants versus unskilled Catholics. Meaning that they could find a captain willing to bet he could sell their indenture in America. After they worked off their indenture, they could then consider earning money to buy a place or moving to the frontier and squatting. The better off came as a family. The fact that they could pay their passage meant that they were better off. They had a larger holding in Ulster and possibly sold the long term lease. ANd possibly recorded the sale. They may have inherited the lease when a parent or other relative died. That may also be recorded. Where? Maybe the deed books. Reading the deed books is one of the strategies one does. Deeds were recorded in Dublin, though, and the further you are from it, the fewer deeds were recorded. Many in Belfast and Antrim, etc, were not. You can try to find lawyers' records in PRONI. However it ain't easy. In colonial America 90% of the population owned land. So the land records are grand. PEople with assets write wills. The wills are grand. Back in Ireland, 95% or more of the people did NOT own land. They didn't record deeds and they didn't have any reason to leave a will. They may appear in the private land records of the estate owner, if you can find them. Few Americans pause to learn how to do research in Ireland in the 1700s -- so they will not succeed because the record situation is entirely different. Still, if your ancestor did come with his family, he had some money to pay for their passage. He may have farmed but he also had a trade: maybe he was a black smith or a hatter like Dan'l BOone, or a weaver. He had a way to make money over there and to make it over here. In ireland people learned trades by being apprenticed. While if one was apprenticed to the father, you didn't pay taxes, but all others were taxed. There are records of apprentice taxes from I think 1706. One example of the type of record that might help you -- if you learn about them. But if you spend your time trying to find a ship list or a baptism, it doesn't matter if you search (on the internet too!!) for 20 years or 50, you will not find these records because they never existed. Non existent records don't, as a rule, survive <grin>. Better to spend a few hours reading Falley "Irish and Scotch-Irish Ancestral Research" or going to a conference or reading articles than trying to find non existent records. I gotta find the books whose names I can't recall on American immigration! (I just moved). Anyhow the other problem is that the scholars have neglected to study American immigration, so little is known. The scholars dig about and find impossible to read records (for ships, insurance papers are really good: Lloyds!!) and publish them. THen professional genealogists can assess the records for genealogical value and eventually the rest of us learn about them....But since the effort is just underway, we don't know a lot, yet. Maybe we will in 20 years. This evaluation of the status of American Immigration studies is from the book whose name I can't recall....Grrr!!! Not my own assessment. A lot of stuff is on the INternet including early Canadian ships. I did some googling a couple weeks ago on ships id'ed in Dobbin's book on Scottish ships. He did his research in Scotland using Scottish sources, yet there was more info on some ships on the INternet than he had in his book! He might have known that the ship crossed in June 1754, but on the Internet you could get the names of the passengers. Linda Merle ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: "Sarah" <agape2u@msinter.net> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 12:56:57 -0600 >Many of our ancestors may have left from Dublin Ire. or Belfast in NI. Both >are huge seaports..........Liverpool is about an hour flight from Belfast so >may have been by ferry in early days. They use many ferries now for people >and cars etc. to go back and forth across to Scotland and England. They >would have had to had quite a bit of money to get over to England to get on >ships from there. >We need Linda's idea on this. The poor in early 1720sand before when my >family lines came over may not have had the money to go to England. Linda >what's the truth on this? >Sarah >----- Original Message ----- >From: <Scotch-Irish-D-request@rootsweb.com> >To: <Scotch-Irish-D@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 9:06 AM >Subject: Scotch-Irish-D Digest V05 #211 > > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Free Edition. >Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.12/194 - Release Date: 12/7/05 > > ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net