You Can Trace Your Family’s Roots On New Ellis Island Web Site

Immigration information, original passenger manifests and historic ship photos may now be accessed online at the American Family Immigration History CenterT database.

You can now discover the records that document your family’s arrival in America thanks to a new site on the Web.

That’s good news for the 60 percent of Americans in search of their ancestry who, in the process, have made genealogy America’s second most popular hobby.

The notable Web site that will help eliminate tedious days of looking for information previously available only on microfilm is the American Family Immigration History Center™ developed by The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.

This database is accessible both at Ellis Island and on the Internet. It holds the records of more than 22 million immigrants, passengers and crew members who entered New York Harbor between 1892 and 1924.

By entering an ancestor’s name, visitors will be able to access 11 fields of digitized information documenting the first steps in America taken by their immigrant ancestors.

Information in these documents includes the immigrant’s name, ship, port of departure, arrival date, line number on manifest, gender, age, marital status, nationality and last residence.

Visitors can obtain free printouts of immigration data. They can also purchase a scanned reproduction of an actual ship’s passenger manifest for $25 to $35 each. Pictures with historic information on over 800 passenger ships that carried immigrants to America are also available.

The site also features "The Immigrant Experience"-six vignettes covering the stories of people who successfully researched their family histories and the motivation behind the desire to search for their families’ roots.

Members of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. can scan in personal family documents, records and photos to create their own family history scrapbooks for storage in this national family history archive.

For more information, write to The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., Attn: Records Search, P.O. Box ELLIS, New York, NY 10163; call 212-883-1986; or visit www.ellisislandrecords.org. (NAPSA)