Searching for Immigrants in the Castle Garden Database

I knew about Ellis Island, but I did not know about Castle Garden. Castle Garden was a Manhattan immigration center before Ellis Island. CastleGarden.org ( http://www.castlegarden.org/ ) allows you to search the records of 10 million of the immigrants processed through this site (there's apparently another two million records that need to be digitized.)

Remembering how slow and awkward searching the Ellis Island records were, I was not looking forward to this. How wrong I was. I don't know if it's a different format or fewer visitors or what, but this searching is much faster.

The simple search allows you to search name and time period. The advanced search is much more thorough but I'll skip it because apparently it costs $45 (?! -- I tried to go through the advanced search to see what the billing process looked like, but then the search started so I just stopped it and went back to the regular search. I don't know how the $45 billing works.)

I did a full-timespan search for Stackhouse. (You don't have to specify a first name.) There were 11 results presented in a table (10 to a page) including first and last name, occupation, age, gender, date of arrival, and ship name. Click on the hyperlinked last name of the person in which you're interested and you'll get a little additional information including port, last residence, plan, etc. (Not all these items are filled in.) You also have a chance to refine your search by place of origin, occupation, and ship.

You can use wildcards in your searches, though they seem to make the search a bit longer. If you add at least a first name to the search it'll make things go much faster. I wish I understood more about that $45 advanced search, but even the simple name and date search is worth a look.

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