Can you help me in locating a ship's manifest?
My Great-Grandfather immigrated from Poland and changed his name, so I've been searching for the ship's manifest for the RMS Scot which arrived in New York City approximately May 23, 1903. I have done numerous searches on FamilySearch, Ancestry.com,
the National Archives and Ellis Island with no success. Since I do not know what my Great-Grandfather's name was before he came to the U.S., the only way to find out is to find the ship's manifest and go through a process of elimination. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any manifests for the RMS Scot. I have even tried searches on British websites including the Union Castle Fleet of Southhampton, England of which the RMS Scot sailed under. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Answers
-
It's possible that the date of arrival or name of the vessel are not exact. I've found several naturalization records in my research with dates that are not quite correct - a slip of memory, perhaps.
On later naturalizations, there may be a Certificate of Arrival, verifying the date and name of the vessel. This is an example:
2 -
Not knowing how drastically the name changed is definitely a challenge. I can't seem to find any mentions of the ship either. Ultimately, you're right. It may come down to a process of elimination, looking at manifests of ships that arrived in New York around that time, and hoping the reported dates aren't too off. You could also try a wildcard search like this, and alternate various letters and combinations to a similar effect:
This result was interesting, but research would have to be done to confirm or rule it out:
1 -
The closest that Steve Morse's search forms get to "The Scot" is the Scotia, which apparently did not sail to New York in 1903 or 1904, so either there's something wrong with the arrival reported on that Declaration, or the relevant records are lost or badly misindexed/misidentified.
2 -
I couldn't find the Scot going to New York in 1903 on FindMyPast either, though it did pop up as going to South Africa that year. (It appears to have served as a Boer War troopship, incidentally.)
Does anyone know how we can search the FS Ellis Island arrivals for particular ships? They appear nicely in the metadata but there is no search capability I can see (and ditto for the immigration date).
1 -
I wonder if "The Scot" was a nickname that was commonly used for the ship by the crew, and if the man in question, being younger at the time and probably still learning English, was only able to pick up that informal name for the vessel.
So much informal, but prevalent at the time, lore gets lost from generation to generation.
3 -
Full-text search may eventually allow searching for the record. There is already a category for passenger lists, but narrowing it to New York doesn't yield many results for the early 1900s.
1 -
I'm pretty sure the ship genuinely existed under that name, see
https://www.bandcstaffregister.com/page1956.html
But FMP doesn't seem to think it ever travelled to New York.
2 -
A keyword search for Ray County Missouri Circuit Court ultimately will lead you to this page: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/1921281 That led me to Declaration of intention and petition for citizenship, v. 1, 1883-1923, Film 005714953. The soft index on the first page shows his Petition # is 43 so, that will lead to Image 264 through 269, Start here: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G93Z-X9XS-D?cat=1921281&i=263&cc=1880587
Sadly, there is no Certificate of Arrival ("CofA") within these documents.
The ship name The Scot. or The Scat. appears abbreviated on the Petition for Naturalization. As previously mentioned, without a true CofA, I wouldn't put much faith in the name of the ship.
Instead of searching on the stevemorse site for the name of the ship, I always start with a search using the Gold Form, located here:https://stevemorse.org/ellis2/ellisgold.html
I entered only Fran for the first name and the letter "B" for the last name and marked both those fields as Starts With, I limited the results to age 19 to 21 upon arrival.
Note this index card and the Petition lists arrival as May 23, The Declaration says May 15. So, I simply entered May and 1903 for date fields, leaving Day blank
Index Card:
Search results:
I am not that familiar with cities in Poland and their proximity to Warsaw, so, I will leave that to others. But #30 on this list seems very interesting.
Note, Ancestry manifests are always 1 day off from Ellis Island results, so that one is here:
But, it could be any of these. If all of these bear no fruit, I would adjust the age range by a year, and perhaps use only "Fra" for the first name to get more results.
I hope all of this gets you closer to your goal!
Best of luck!
5 -
@MandyShaw1 - I agree with you that the ship existed under the name "Scot" (note - not "The Scot"). Looking at what the owner did (UK-South Africa traffic) it also seems unlikely that she would have been used on the Atlantic crossing route at that date, reinforcing what you say about FMP.
So presumably the actual name of the ship is some subtle (or not so subtle!) variation on "The Scot". With or without the definite article.
1 -
Mandy asked: "Does anyone know how we can search the FS Ellis Island arrivals for particular ships?"
I believe the answer is "using Steve Morse's site". As far as I know, those search forms use the same index as what FS (and the Ellis Island site) started with (before user corrections).
2 -
Thank you all for your input and comments regarding my search for information on my Great-Grandfather "Frank Brown". I now have a few more "rabbit holes" I can explore in my spare time.
1 -
@WilliamBrown960 Here is an index of all the ships arriving in New York in May of 1903. Unfortunately, none bear the name of "Scot". I'm sorry it's another rabbit hole.
5 -
Thanx 4 the info. It's more than what I had.
0
