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This Family Archive contains alphabetical listings of approximately 161,000 individuals who arrived at the port of Boston from foreign ports between 1821 and 1850. Partly in an effort to alleviate overcrowding of passenger ships, Congress enacted legislation (3 Stat. 489) on March 2, 1819 to regulate the transport of passengers in ships arriving in the United States from foreign ports. As a provision of this act, masters of such ships were required to submit a list of all passengers to the collector of customs in the district in which the ship arrived. The legislation required that the list note, in particular, "the age, sex, and occupation of the aid passengers, respectively, the country to which they severally belong, and that of which it is their intention to become inhabitants." What you'll find: Age; Gender; Arrival date in Boston; Country of origin; Occupation; Name of the ship on which the individual sailed (this is available in approximately 20% of records); National Archives microfilm roll on which you may wish to research further or verify the information included here. When researching with this Family Archive it is important to remember that names of immigrants were often recorded as they were heard and that many immigrants could not spell their own names. Thus, spelling variations of names occur and members of the same family arriving at different times or places may be found with different spellings

System Requirements: A CD drive; One of the following two programs: 1 Family Tree Maker for Windows