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Electronic records of immigrants being developed
By MIM SWARTZ
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
ELLIS ISLAND, N.Y. -- Families will be able to track down their immigrant relatives by computer at a $15 million genealogy center being developed at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
The new American Family Immigration History Center will have electronic records of the more than 17 million people who entered the United States through the port of New York from 1892 to 1924. The records have been available only on microfilm at the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which specializes in family-history research, has volunteered to convert the records electronically and has spent 2 million hours on the project.
The information is being taken from the microfilmed copies of the original ledgers of ships' manifests that were mostly handwritten, faded and damaged. The original documents were destroyed years ago.
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc. is overseeing the center, whose first phase is scheduled to open in late 2000. The information will include the immigrant's given name, surname, gender, age, marital status, nationality, last residence (town and country), ship's name, port of origin, arrival date and line number on the manifest.
For a nominal fee, visitors will receive a printout of their ancestor's data, a scanned reproduction of the ship's original manifest on which their ancestor's entry appears, and a picture of the ship.
The center hopes to eventually make the arrival records available on the Internet.
For information on the American Family Immigration History Center, write to: Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc., P.O. Box ELLIS, New York, NY 10163; phone 212-883-1986; Web site: www.ellisisland.org
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