Be Sure to Visit my new 1900 Galveston Storm Website at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootseb.com/~barnette 

ELLIS ISLAND DATABASE LAUNCHED

 Housed at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum the long awaited Ellis Island passenger database is scheduled to be launched April 17. It will contain the names of the more than 17 million passengers who arrived at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. The database will be accessible both at the museum and on the Internet at the Ellis Island Home Page  http://www.ellisisland.org. and at the Ellis Island Records Page http://www.ellisislandrecords.org

 The database has been created from digitized information taken directly from ship passenger manifests available on National Archives microfilm. The research fields of the database consist of the following information: given and surname of the immigrant, name of ship, port of origin, date of arrival, line number on manifest, gender, age, marital status, nationality and last city or country of residence.

 For a nominal fee visitors to the database will be able to order a printout of their family's data including a scanned reproduction of the original ship's manifest and picture of the ship on which they arrived.

 The new immigration website will also contain information on a wide range of immigration groups including a multimedia presentation overview of immigration patterns from specific countries and regions. Teachers will find online immigration class guides and teaching aids.

 As background, beginning in 1820 ship captains bringing passengers from foreign ports to the United States were required to present the port customs officer with a completed passenger manifest. Each state was responsible for providing port facilities for immigration processing. In 1890, however, the Immigration and Naturalization Service took over the task of immigration control and Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892 as a state of the art Federal immigration processing facility.

 Many of the passenger manifests created between 1820 and 1954 are on microfilm at Clayton Library, Center for Genealogical Research located at 5300 Caroline in the Houston Museum District. The microfilmed manifests at Clayton Library include many major and minor ports including those of Galveston, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans.

   GENEALOGICAL COURSE OFFERED

 Offered by Leisure Learning, Mic Barnette will teach an introductory course in family history. Roots of Genealogy-How To Research Your Family Tree will be held from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. Tuesday, May 1 at Leisure Learning's 2990 Richmond Ave campus. The following week the class will tour Clayton Genealogical Library and conduct on site census research. For more information and to register, contact Leisure Learning at 713-529-4414.

SURFING THE INTERNET

 Mic Barnette  will lead a Surfing the Internet for Genealogy class at Houston Community College's 1681 Cartwright Missouri City campus. This class is a live three hour virtual tour of some of the best genealogical websites on the Internet. It will be held Wednesday May 2 from 1 to 4 P.M. For more information and to register, contact HCC at 281-835-5539.

CEMETERY AND DEMOMINATIONAL NEWSPAPERS

 Paula Perkins Parke will teach a three hour class, Soul Searching: Cemetery and Denominational Newspapers Research at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, 11612 Memorial Drive.  For more information and to register contact MDPC by calling 713-953-2550, Extension 194.

NEWS FROM THE BOOKSHELF

 The Genealogical Publishing Company, one of the oldest and  foremost publishers of genealogical titles, has arranged with Genealogy.Com to produce CD-ROMs with digitally scanned images of a number of their books. Two such CD-ROMs currently available are  Peter Wilson Coldham's The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607-1776 and The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614-1775 and  Immigrants to America 1600s-1800s Immigration Records.

 Originally published in six volumes Coldham's books contain the names of approximately 140,000 men, women and children who emigrated from England to America between 1607 and 1776. His data was compiled from English sources and contains a great deal of information never published in America prior to the publication of his books.

 Information in Coldham's books usually contain the following types of information: name, age, occupation, residence, destination, date of emigration and name of ship. In cases where one was sentenced to America, the data tells the parish of origin, nature of the offense, sentencing date and court location and the date and ship on which the person was transported.

 The Immigrants to America database was compiled from public and private sources. It contains the names of over 200,000 individuals referenced in over 20 volumes of passenger lists, legal documents, church histories, land records, biographies and tax lists.

 From the Immigrants to America database, one will find the following types of information: place of origin, name of passenger, age and occupation,     name of the ship or vessel and the date and port of arrival.

 To view the CD-ROMs one must have a computer with a CD-ROM drive and have either Family Tree Maker for Windows version 3.2 or higher or Family Finder Index and Viewer version 3.02 which is free upon request.

 Both CD-ROMs are available from the Genealogical Publishing Company, 1001 North Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 and are priced at $29.95 each plus $3.50 Postage.