What fires the imagination more than the image of our own immigrant ancestors first setting foot on American soil? Your family's arrival in the United States is an important part of your personal history. There may be a passenger arrival list that shows your ancestor's name—and hopefully a lot more about him or her.

For most ships entering U.S. ports between 1565 and 1954, a passenger list was compiled. While not all passenger lists have survived, most extant lists included the name of the ship, the captain's name, the port and date of the ship's departure, and the port and date of arrival in the U.S. Additionally, passenger lists included a roster of the passengers with varying amounts of identifying information.

Passenger arrival lists can be among the most valuable sources for documenting our ancestors' immigration. While the content of passenger lists has changed significantly over the years, these much-sought records are in great demand by demographers, historians, genealogists, and even those with just a casual interest in their heritage.

Official U.S. government passenger arrival lists are available from 1820 (when the government first kept passenger lists) through 1945 for most of the ports in the United States with customs houses. Those available in the National Archives on microfilm are tabulated in Immigration and Passenger Arrivals: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilms. The lists are divided into customs passenger lists (original lists, copies, or abstracts) and immigration passenger lists (State Department transcripts and lists) with pertinent indexes. Microfilm copies are also available for searching at the Family History Library and its family history centers located throughout the United States. Selected passenger lists are available at some public and genealogical libraries. The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for example, has a large collection of passenger list microfilms.

For pre-1820 official lists, researchers must rely on...

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