First Generation
I come from a long line of immigrants. I’m a third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation American. But I also have strong roots in the soil of southern Italy, the farmlands of southeastern Ireland, the potteries of England, and the Welsh countryside.
Most Americans can trace back their family history to immigrants—whether they arrived on the May flower, a Boeing-737, or sometime in the centuries between. Chain migration has been a main driver of population growth since the beginning of the United States, as individuals immigrated to reunite families or en masse to populate a new village. Forces in home countries also pushed people to immigrate: political upheavals, wars, oppression, famine and lack of economic opportunities.
As with most genealogy searches, you can begin looking for documentation of your immigrant ancestor at home. Passports or old photos may give clues to point of origin, as well as any family traditions. Family lore—even if fantastical or misremembered—might contain some fact, and stands to be proven or disproven using records.
Whether other records of your immigrant ancestors exist depends on when and how they arrived in the United States, and what (if any) interaction they had with the government after. In this article, we’ll discuss three key types of immigration records, plus a smattering of others. As we’ll learn, not all immigrants were even eligible to generate certain records, but documents—when you find them—will help you trace your ancestor back to the Old World.
Of course, not all
