Immigration records now available

U.S. Immigration Project Milestone

July 10, 2013 By Katie Gale

A melting pot, a kaleidoscope, a mosaic—the United States of America has been called many things, but overall it is a nation of immigrants, as much as any country in the world. If you go back far enough, most U.S. citizens came from somewhere else: Europe, Asia, Africa—the list goes on and on. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Community Project aims to make the legacy and stories of U.S. immigrant ancestors easy for everyone to discover.
In June, the project reached a significant milestone of 50 million passenger ship and naturalization records indexed! Add that to the 25 million Ellis Island records indexed years ago—before FamilySearch indexing started—and you’ve got 75 MILLION free immigration and naturalization records ready (or nearly ready) to search to your heart’s content.
Thank you for all of your hard work to make these records searchable. Over 165,000 volunteers have helped reach this milestone, including members of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Genealogical Society (NGS), the Association of Professional Genealogists, and other societies.
The power of the community is truly amazing! If your group would like to join the cause, please send an e-mail to fsindexing@familysearch.org.
Many volunteers stopped by the FamilySearch indexing booth at the NGS conference to celebrate the project. One attendee and indexer named Vikki even found the ship record showing her and her mother entering the U.S. through the port of San Francisco at six months old. Read her story and others in the article Remarkable Stories Add Value to Genealogy Conference.
We still have 60 million more U.S. immigration records and naturalization documents (at both the federal and county level) left to index. If everyone works together, we can finish indexing this project by the end of the year. So tell your friends and family to come join the indexing fun. The more people who help, the sooner these records will be freely searchable.
Current projects:

• US, Hawaii, Honolulu—Passenger Lists, 1900–1952
• US, Massachusetts, Boston—Crew Lists, 1891–1957
• US, New York—Passenger Lists, 1875–1891
• US, Texas, Del Rio—Alien Arrivals, 1906–1953

Projects coming soon:

• US, Connecticut—Naturalizations, 1851–1992
• US, Rhode Island—Naturalizations, 1906–1991
• Maryland, Baltimore—Passenger Lists, 1820–1897
• New England—Naturalizations, 1787–1931

Have you checked out the latest training resources?

• How to Index Passenger Lists (slides)
• Accents: They Aren’t Just Punctuation (blog article)
• Name Changes (video)
• Birthplace and Nationality (video)
• Lookup Lists (video)
• Adding Lines (video)
• Getting Help (video)

So spread the word! Then jump in, and enjoy indexing the U.S. immigration and naturalization records to make discovering the stories of our immigrant ancestors easier than ever!