Ellis Island.org records online (search for immigrant ancestors and view original ship manifest). All you need to do in order to search is sign up at the site, however this is FREE.  If you can not find your ancestors record at the Ellis Island site, that doesn't mean the record is not there, you are at the mercy of the transcriber's interpretation of spelling.

Emigration from Banat by David Dreyer
This database is taken from US Customs & Immigration passenger ship records prior to World War I. The mostly German settled Banat area was once part of the Austrian Empire and is now divided among Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary.  Note: the spelling of the names shown are not always as they are recorded on the manifest.

Pre World War I Migration Patterns of Banat Germans to North America
By David Dreyer and Anton Kraemer - © 2002, 2003

One-Step Webpages by Stephen P. Morse
This site contains tools for finding immigration records, census records, vital records, and for dealing with calendars, maps, foreign alphabets, and numerous other applications. Some of these tools fetch data from other websites but do so in more versatile ways than the search tools provided on those websites.

German Roots: Ship Passenger Lists and Records Online
Internet Sources for Digitized or Transcribed Passenger Records & Indexes

Resources for Finding New York Passenger Lists 1847-1897
(the Un-indexed Years) Castle Garden Passenger Lists

Bremen Passenger Lists
Search by Home Towns
Bremen Passenger Lists 1920-1939 While most of the Bremen passenger departure records were destroyed, about 3000 of them from 1920-1939 (still incomplete) have survived and are stored at the Bremen Chamber of Commerce. A Bremen based genealogical society called Die Maus is transcribing these lists and putting them on their website.

US Ports of Arrival and Their Available Passenger Lists 1820-1957 includes Canadian & Mexican Border Crossing Records

Olive Tree Ships Passenger Lists to USA 1870-1890

Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide To Published Sources

DVHH Village Passenger Records - Below are passenger records via Ellis Island and/or Bremen, compiled by Village Coordinators and others (using various spellings and misspellings for the village names). Individual Village passenger lists are linked directly to the Ellis Island record, but you must be registered at Ellis to access the record, (registration is free).:

The Ships & Data - Information regarding the ships your Donauschwaben ancestors journeyed on. 

SLAVONIA (2) / YAMUNA 1902 

Markings in the Manifest's Name Column - Many of the notations found in the name column relate not to the name directly but to later record checks, usually in response to an inquiry by the immigrant himself (or herself). Officials annotated almost anything in the name column, probably because it usually provided some empty space where information could be added.

The Hamburg Passenger Departure Lists 1850-1934
Help Reading a Hamburg Passenger Record - Each page of a Hamburg passenger list contains 12 columns. The headings are in German. Here is what they mean in English...

Alien Detention
Contributed by Rose Mary Keller Hughes

Causes (Grounds) for Exclusion Noted on BSI (Board of Special Inquiry) Lists, ca. 1903-1924

Immigrants detained faced only minor obstacles to their admission. The most commonly detained immigrants were women traveling alone (or with her children), destined to a husband, fiancé, or male relative. These women could not be admitted without assurance that someone would care for and protect them. A woman may have been held to wait for her husband to come collect her, or to wait until a response was received to a telegram informing her husband or relative of her arrival. Once it was known someone expected her, she could be sent forward via rail to her destination. The "Cause of Detention" in these cases usually reads "to husb[and]," or to father, mother, sister, brother, brother-in-law (b-i-l), uncle, etc. Then, in the "Disposition" column, one will read the name and address of the person to whom the immigrant was released, even if that person is at an address far from Ellis Island. If this information is preceded by the initials "R.R.," it means the passenger was sent forward via rail.

Often, immigrant aid societies took charge of these women (or children traveling alone) and guaranteed immigration officials of the immigrants' safe arrival at their proper destination. In these cases, the person to whom the immigrant was released may be the name of the aid society, such as "Hebrew Society," "Irish Home," etc.

Another common cause for detention was an immigrant's lack of tickets through to his or her final destination. The cause listed in these cases is typically "to Tel $," meaning a telegram had been sent to their relatives to send money for transportation fare. Once received, the immigrant was ticketed and released.

One will often see a time noted at top or at various points down the "Cause" column. This is the time of day (on the date noted at the top of the list) when the immigrant was detained.

The government also used the Record of Detained Aliens to capture administrative information. The "Discharged" column showed the name or initials of the Immigrant Inspector who decided to release the immigrant, which allowed for review of his work and decisions. The date and time of discharge not only recorded more information about the disposition of the individual case, but also contributed to statistics covering the average length of detention by cause, by nationality, or by Inspector.

The "Meals" column shows the number of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners consumed by each detained immigrant. This data was used to compute the monthly bills to steamship companies, who were responsible for the detention expenses of each excludable immigrant they brought to United States ports of entry.

Alien Detention Reasons:

US Citizens & Immigration Services
US Citizens & Immigration Services - The official INS provides instructions on "How to Make a FOIA or PA Request" 

G-1041A, Genealogy Records Request

Download Form G-1041A (131KB PDF)

Download Instructions for Form G-1041A (46KB PDF)

Purpose of Form :

Use Form G-1041A to obtain copies of USCIS historical records. (To request an index search of USCIS historical records, use Form G-1041, Genealogy Index Search Request.)

Form 2; Instructions 3.

04/30/09. Previous editions accepted.
Note on Expiration: USCIS continues to accept the 04/30/09 edition of Form G-1041A available here despite the passing of the form's expiration date. An updated form will be posted as soon as it becomes available.

Mail your request to:

USCIS Genealogy Program
PO Box 805925
Chicago, IL 60680-4120

The fee for a copy from microfilm is $20 per request. The fee for a copy of a hard copy file is $35 per request.

Note on fees: You must submit the appropriate fee with this form for a genealogy records request. The fee for a copy from microfilm is $20 per request. The fee for a copy of a hard copy file is $35 per request. Send payment with your request form. Payment may be in the form of a cashier's check or money order. Personal checks will not be accepted, and they will be returned to you. If the form is submitted from outside the United States, remittance may be made with a bank international money order or foreign draft drawn in U.S. dollars and payable through a U.S. bank. Make all payments payable in U.S. currency to the Department of Homeland Security. Do not send cash with your form. If the file number provided does not match the immigrant named on this form, and there is no previous Genealogy Index Search case identification number provided, we will not refund any fee.

Last updated:05/02/2012 - Information provided by Debbie Burns.

Italiangen Naturalization Records (Index Only)

• District Courts of NY Naturalizations

• Clinton County, New York Naturalizations

• Essex County, New York Naturalizations

• Camden, New Jersey Naturalizations

• Newark, New Jersey Naturalizations

• Trenton, New Jersey Naturalizations

• Military Naturalizations

Remember Where You Came From
by Alex Leeb, The fees were paid and finally on August 19, 1950, we arrived by train at Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

The 1950s Donauschwaben Immigration
Oral History Project by Sophia Swartz - Interview with Franz Bohn, 2015

Destitute to America - 1912 Experiences
by Kurt Aram, Translation by Brad Schwebler

My Big Adventure: America
by Adam Martini, Translation by son, Hans Martini

Journey from Alexanderhausen to Ottawa 'Sketch of a memoir'
by Nick Tullius

Emigration From Somogy County To Slavonia & the USA (1860-1914) 
Translated by Henry Fischer, 15 May 2008