[WSCSS] New National Archives resources for Wonderful Washington Teachers (etc)

[Carol Buswell]

The National Archives and Records Administration recently has added more
than 5.2 million records of some passengers who arrived during the last
half of the 19th century at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans,
New York, and Philadelphia to the Access to Archival Databases (AAD)
online resource (www.archives.gov/aad).  The records were transcribed
from original ship manifests into electronic databases by the Balch
Institute for Ethnic Studies at the Center for Immigration Research.  
The institute donated the digital records to the National Archives.  The
records are known as Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Germans
to the United States, 1850-1897; Data Files Relating to the Immigration
of Italians to the United States, 1855-1900; and Data Files Relating to
the Immigration of Russians to the United States, 1834-1897.  

There are more than 100 unique "country" codes used in these
records.  In about 93 percent of them, passengers identified their
country of origin or nationality as Germany, Italy, or Russia, or cities
or regions of those countries.  In the remaining records, the passengers
reported other countries or places.  Each passenger record may include
name, age, town of last residence, destination, and codes for the
passenger's sex, occupation, literacy, country of origin, transit
and/or travel compartment, and the manifest identification number for
the ship.  Information on each ship is in a separate file and includes
the ship manifest identification number, the name of the ship, the code
for its port of departure, and date of arrival.  The ship manifest
identification number indicates the port of arrival.  Individual records
can be retrieved through the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource
on NARA's web site at www.archives.gov/aad.  

AAD currently includes almost 80 million electronic records from 51
series in 29 record groups and four collections of donated historical
materials.




Carol Buswell

Education Specialist
National Archives and Records Administration
Pacific Alaska Region
6125 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA  98115-7999
(206) 336-5151
carol.buswell at nara.gov