Accessing Passenger List on New Netherland Institute Voyages

 

This is the cover page of New Netherland Institute - Be sure to Donate! (click here)

Where Are the Passengers' Names?
This tool is rather comprehensive for what it has captured. Reaching the passenger lists however, is not intuitive.  So you have to be ready to explore. 

Of course, the passenger list can be accessed if you already know the ship name AND the year that it arrived.  My Vosburg family were in New Netherlands before 1660 and I have no idea on which ship. So, off to a3Genealogy digging. 

This is a quick tutorial in 6 Steps. 

Step 1: Link to the Database: Voyages of new Netherland or https://airtable.com/shrMDlcIOR4lhG2hh

Opening View

Step 2: Find the “Hidden Fields” on the second line of the table. Here it says 108 Hidden Fields.  That has to hold great information! Click on “Hidden Fields” and you will get a drop window.  Choose “Hide All”, and all the green options will lose their green highlight.

Play with Hidden Fields. Toggle Off fields if not needed.

Step 3: Choose options to view from Hidden Fields. I choose the least options as possible since I have no idea of the ship name or the crew, and all I know is the ancestor’s surname.  Therefore, I activate the fields for Departure Years and for all 7 of the Passengers Recorded.  (I can choose crew, soldiers, also, but I’m searching for occurrences of ancestral surnames; and I find it easiest if I do this is small steps. Yes!!! There are 7 options of Passengers Recorded, so I scroll and click all seven if needed. I have no idea how or why this is divided as such but I noticed only Passengers Recorded_1 through Passengers Recorded_3 are populated (not 4-7).

Note: Your view is partially blocked as you chose this options, but you can see your screen being populated in the background. Click on the populated screen (to the right anywhere and the dropdown menu will disappear.  In the end you will get this view. Note there are passengers!

See Departure Years and SOME names that can be viewed under Passengers Recorded

At the bottom of this screen (not shown here) a note informs me that the database holds 248 records with Passengers Recorded, but I only care about the records before 1660. So let’s take a look at line 129,  Voyage ID v_152in 1651.  (Alternately you can ctrl+find on the full Grid View and search for your surname, and the entire Passengers Recorded listing is searched, but what if your spelling is one letter off?)

Step 4: Expand the Passengers Recorded field. 
When you click PassengersRecorded_1, on line 129 (see below) expand the view with the small blue arrow. 

Expand to see full passenger list

Or you can just chose the Voyage (v_152) and line number I want (129). Either way, the passengers are listed.  

Passenger Names

a3Genealogy and I have no association with the Institute; just a happy user.
Happy New Netherland Ancestor searching!
Kathleen Brandt

Brickwall? Turn to the Law for Hints

How Did the Family Disappear?

1819 Virginia Laws/Codes

When an ancestor doesn’t do the expected, or it appears that at best they made a decision that seems truly insane, perhaps a look at the laws for this time period is a good idea.  The answers to some of the insanity may be buried in legislation books. 

Genealogists and family historians should never complete the story without the facts.  And a few minutes reviewing the laws of the time, especially in America history from the Colonial Period up to the Reconstruction era may explain it all. 

Did You Know In Colonial…?

• 1683 Pennsylvania: a law united Pennsylvania with the lower counties (Delaware) and allowed for naturalizing the Swedes. All freemen were made citizens and all Christians were freemen, except servants and convicts. A similar law was repealed in Virginia and baptism no longer exempted you from slavery.

• 1670 North Carolina: marriages were few before 1670, so our ancestors may not be in the church records.  Why? Only ministers of the Church of England were entitled to perform the rite of marriage before 1670, and few visited or settled in Carolina.  As a result, An Act Concerning Marriages (1669) was ratified by the Assembly of Albemarle to perform marriage ceremonies.

• 1700 Massachusetts: June a law passed ordering Roman Catholic priests to leave the colony within three months, upon penalty of life imprisonment or execution. New York passed a similar law.

 Can’t Find Naturalization Records 

• Between 1855 and 1922 the law stated that an alien woman became a citizen automatically if she married a native-born or naturalized citizen. 

• After 1922, a married woman alien had to obtain naturalization on her own. 

•  Former black slaves were made citizens by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

• Expedited naturalization proceedings have been available to aliens who are Army veterans, since 1862; Navy veterans, since 1894; and wartime enlistees, since 1918.

• Statutes during World War I and the permitted naturalization proceedings to take place abroad.  This law was also instated during the Korean War.   

Free-Colored (Creole) Ancestor Missing 

Free coloreds were not created equal in the Gulf South.  Free Coloreds classified as Creoles were granted more privileges and rights than other free coloreds in the south.  This encouraged fair skinned coloreds (not all mulattoes) with an aire of an “uppity” class to blend in and migrate to Alabama and Florida.  However, these rights were soon ripped and your free-colored ancestors may have been on the move again.

• 1833 Alabama recognized “Creoles of Color” and granted them advantages not otherwise afforded by “free coloreds.” This could explain why a free-colored ancestor would have migrated to Alabama.  One advantage was education privileges that “colored children” were not granted. Free Creoles' rights were stripped beginning in 1840, and enforced by 1850.

• 1857 Pensacola Florida Free Creoles voluntarily exiled to Tampico due to local legislation that stripped them of their “civil” rights."

Can’t Find Your Native American Ancestors in Virginia 

• 1850 Amherst County Native Americans were classified as “black free inhabitants” or “white” based on the racial community where they lived.  This also led to interracial family units for subsequent generations, no longer “Indian.”

• 1880 to 1900 the Native Americans in Amherst County were forced by law in 1705 to be called "mulatto" and then called "black" in 1900, erasing records of “Indian.”

(Reprint, "But It Doesn't Follow Logic!" 2 Nov 2010)

Happy Ancestral Holiday Hunting

Kathleen Brandt, a3Genealogy