Scotch-Irish-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: Re: [Scotch-Irish] "Cattle Boats"
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 06:57:19 -0700

Hi, You don't seem to identify the time period so it is rather difficult
to answer the questions precisely.

>did very many people utilize this method of transport to get to >America,

Cattle boats? Donno. Before the age of passenger ships (hit in the
middle of the Famine) it was hard to find a non existing
passenger ship so everyone came over (excepting those delivered by
Superman and friendly UFOs) on a cargo ship. One direction they
hauled stuff. Other they hauled people. I'm talking here pre 1850,
like colonial times. Its when mine came. Earlier you go the less likelihood there was of finding a passengership unless UFOs qualify for that definition. I think some of mine did take the UFO route, myself!!

There's a lot of info out there on immigration and ships. That's
not our specialty here. Try the ship list. http://cyndislist.com will
have lots of info. But plan on having to read books to get to the bottom of it.

> and if so, were the boats (or ships) required to record and file a >listing of individuals who came in this manner?

Again the time period vagueness makes it impossible to answer for your case.

In 1820 the USA passed a law requiring that ships make lists of
arriving immigrants. Before that some lists exist for some kinds of
people. For example, in colonial times, British law required that
the names of aliens be written down since it was feared they might
cause trouble. The largest group of non British colonial immigrants
was the PA Germans. We have long lists of them coming on the same
ships as our ancestors came. We do not have lists of British citizens.
There are some lists of course and on and on and on we go. We post
this information at least once a day so if I seem jaded....I am.

Only 2/3rds of US citizens came by way of US ports. 1/3rd came through
Canada so you will never find them in a USA ship list. Of course we didn't keep records on who was crossing the border till very late.
That would make it too easy.

While we got no broad coverage of ship lists before 1820, we got fewer
people coming and we got more people working on documenting the colonial immigrants. It is more likely you will find info on them in print. So check Filby.

Unless you are willing to study up on the issue, you may miss
some information on your specific ancestor. Here's a very good place
to study up on it free:

http://genealogy.com/university.html . You can buy books on immigration
research and also find classes. Every one will be different. Perhaps
on the 10th one you will learn something that will lead you to your
ancestor. So....little effort will produce little result. Bigger efforts....better results. Effort isn't time spent but time intelligently spent. I love these folk (I'm closely related to a
number) who claim to have searched for 30 years but don't know the most basic, common, foundational research aids. Endurance helps with winning the triathalon but not genealogy. Need to keep on spiffing up the research skills and reading books about how the how tos and the history.

The above URL explains what Filby is. Our archives do too but not as well. On the fly emails can't compete with well written books.

Linda Merle

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