I am trying to research a priest who is said to be from the same town as the family I am researching. According to his naturalization, he arrived on the Kaiser Wilhelm des Grosse on 14 Dec 1904 and the ship did come on that day. I have not been able to find him in the Ellis Island index (searching the ship by name for 1904-5 for everyone whose last name began with T) and I am in the process to looking through the entire manifest. I am wondering if perhaps a priest would not have to travel in steerage and would not go through Ellis Island. (His naturalization says he was born in Eperjes but I think the family was from a smaller town so I would like to know what is on the ship's manifest.) Donna

Hello Donna, Three comments to help you. One, do not be surprised if you don't find him on the manifest, though I hope you do. I have seen hundreds of official documents from the INS and other places that have just plain incorrect information on them regarding ship's names and specific dates of arrival. Two, transcription errors (both from immigrant's mouth to manifest and from manifest to Ellis Island) are reknown. Errors exist by the thousands. If you want to stay seated, begin to search the database using letters that could appear as the same form. For example, "T" and "F". Look at the specific manifest to understand the writing style of the particular clerk. That will help give you an idea what letters will appear similar in form. Third the NARA SOUNDEX index is a very superior index to the Ellisislandrecords.org index. It was an index of immigrants produced in the 1930's by the NARA to aid in finding surnames which may sound alike. It is an ingenious system which helped me find dozens of relatives I never would have found online. It will however, require you to get out of that easy chair and go down to the Mormon's Family History Center or a National Archive's office for microfilm viewing. If anyone is at all serious about doing comprehensive family research, SOUNDEX should be on their must-do list. Good Luck, Bill Tarkulich -----Original Message----- From: Donna Przecha [mailto:DonnaPrz@att.net] Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 8:34 PM To: SLOVAKIA-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Priests in steerage I am trying to research a priest who is said to be from the same town as the family I am researching. According to his naturalization, he arrived on the Kaiser Wilhelm des Grosse on 14 Dec 1904 and the ship did come on that day. I have not been able to find him in the Ellis Island index (searching the ship by name for 1904-5 for everyone whose last name began with T) and I am in the process to looking through the entire manifest. I am wondering if perhaps a priest would not have to travel in steerage and would not go through Ellis Island. (His naturalization says he was born in Eperjes but I think the family was from a smaller town so I would like to know what is on the ship's manifest.) Donna ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237