If you carefully study your pedigree, it is quite possible that in your family tree you will find relatives who traveled to America more than a century ago in search of a better life and continued their lineage there. It is possible that today your distant relatives live across the ocean, who even retained a surname consonant with you.
Such cases in the genealogy of Ukrainian families are not unique. The rapid demographic growth of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries and, accordingly, the growing land hunger massively pushed the population of Ukrainian lands, both from the Austrian and Russian empires, to search for a better fate overseas.

How to find records of your relatives who once emigrated to the USA? Today, for this purpose, special online services are used to search for people who once sailed to America. Arrival in the New World was accompanied by a series of formal procedures that each emigrant had to go through before setting foot on the mainland. The point of arrival for most migrants from Europe was Ellis Island in New York. It is located near the island of Liberty, on which stands the famous statue of the same name. The majestic monument was one of the first objects that migrants saw from the deck of the ship, sailing to the American coast.
Since 1892, Ellis Island has had a federal government immigration office. There, emigrants underwent weeks of quarantine, medical examination, registration, and only after passing all these necessary procedures, they could get to the mainland. In general, it is generally accepted that in the period from 1892 to 1924. about 16 million people got into the USA through Ellis Island. A third of them settled in New York itself. Another 20 million people entered the US through the island from 1892 to 1954. Ellis Island has stopped accepting migrants since 1954, and now the Immigration Museum operates there.
Today, information about the majority of legal migrants to America who arrived in Novaya Zemlya through Ellis Island has been digitized and is freely available.
We will analyze one of the most popular and, in our opinion, convenient migrant search system in the United States. This is The Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation website .

On the main page of the site, you can immediately start the search by entering the desired surname and name in Latin. It is not necessary to indicate the last name, the main thing is to correctly enter the last name. To do this, try several combinations with vowels that are consonant, or with similar consonants.

The system itself suggests similar surnames, however, for example, the surname Lyseyko can be entered as Lyseyko, Leseyko, Lisejko, and each time the system will issue data on new personalities, most of which, in fact, belonged to the same family.
In order to fully use all the features of the site, it is better to register immediately. Without registration, you will not be able to view more detailed information about the persons you are interested in.

After registration, you can start a full-fledged search for ancestors in the resource database. Enter the desired surname on the main page, and the system will show you a list of people, which will indicate the name and surname of the migrant, the year of arrival, the place of previous residence and the name of the ship on which the person arrived in the United States. Also on the site there are opportunities to get more detailed information about the person you are interested in. For this purpose, special tabs are used.

The Passenger Record tab contains detailed information about the person you are interested in. All information is in English:

First name - first name
Last name - surname
Nationality - nationality, citizenship or citizenship
Last Place of Residence - place of residence
Date of Arrival - date of arrival in the USA
Gender - gender
Marital Status - marital status
Ship of Travel - the ship on which the migrant went to the USA
Port of Departure - port of departure
Manifest Line Number - the number by which the migrant was registered as a ship passenger.

The Ship Information tab contains information about the ship on which the migrant arrived in the United States. Here you can see a photo of the ship, a brief summary of the technical characteristics and history of the ship. As a rule, these were large ships cruising between Europe and America, carrying hundreds of passengers on board.

The Ship Manifest tab is especially interesting - there you will find a scanned copy of the original document with a record of the arrival of the person you are interested in.

This is a set of basic options that you can use when looking for migrants in the United States. We hope the information was useful and you will find one of the relatives who once went abroad in search of a better life. If the search causes difficulties or reaches a dead end, the specialists of our organization will help you find your relatives , including those who once went abroad.