Find your immigrant ancestor in United States records

Find your immigrant ancestors by identifying which of your ancestors most likely immigrated to the United States and then searching for them among those on passenger lists or naturalization and border crossing records. The FamilySearch wiki includes rich information about finding ancestors who immigrated to the United States. A separate article, United States immigration online genealogy records,details hundreds of online collections where immigrant ancestors may be found.

Ship manifests and emigration documents were typically created at the point of departure or in an immigrant's homeland. Some countries have detailed records of those who emigrated on ships from specific ports. Once immigrants arrived in the United States, new records were created to document information about these people. Passenger lists were used to start a paper trail for new immigrants. Border crossings served a similar purpose for immigrants who chose to stay in the country permanently. Naturalization records document citizenship for immigrants. Immigrants may also appear in census records, newspapers, and other records of the general population.

A port of entry is a recognized harbor, airport, or border crossing where people and goods enter a country. Prior to the advent of air travel, most immigrants to the United States entered through a handful of ports, primarily on ships. Today, people are able to enter the United States through more than 300 official ports of entry.

During the founding and colonial period of the United States, the population of foreign-born citizens grew through voluntary migration as well as forced migration through slavery. Following the colonial period of the United States and the passage of the Constitution, the young country took a more active role in tracking immigration to ensure that anyone seeking citizenship had already been living in the United States and was willing to pledge an oath of allegiance to the government. Tracking of immigrants through ports became common in the 1820s and became more uniform through the subsequent decades leading up to to the Civil War.

Millions of immigrations records are available to document the nearly 90 million immigrants who have come to call the United States home. An article in the FamilySearch Wiki, United States immigration online genealogy records,details hundreds of potential collections available online where immigrant ancestors may be found.