Ship comes in for Scots seeking emigration histories

Published on Thursday 9 November 2006 02:34

SCOTS can now track down long-lost relatives who left the country during more than a century of emigration, thanks to a genealogy website. Ancestry.co.uk which made headlines this year when it put the earliest UK phone books online, is now offering searchable records of passengers on 100 million transatlantic crossings from 1820 to 1960.

The data is taken from US government immigration records from arrival centres such as New York's Ellis Island. It can be searched by name to show the departure date, port, age, occupation, accompanying family members, reason for travel and who funded the voyage.

Between 1820 and 1900, about one in 20 Scots emigrated to the United States, departing from the ports of Glasgow and Aberdeen for cities such as Boston and Philadelphia.

Simon Harper, the managing director of Ancestry, said: "For those of us whose ancestors stayed in the British Isles, it means we can now discover when and where their direct family members resettled, and also discover their descendants - our living US relatives."