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Ancestry Daily News
12/5/2002 - Archive
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New Ellis Island Database Search Tools |
New Ellis Island Database Search Tools
By now, many of you are aware that The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation,
Inc. and JewishGen®, Inc. announced a working relationship on 21 October
2002 to "provide enhanced search capabilities for the Ellis Island Database."
More precisely, this means that JewishGen.org is hosting a set of search tools
(www.jewishgen.org/databases/eidb/
) created by Stephen Morse with the help of Michael Tobias and Erik Steinmetz.
If you haven't taken time to delve into this yet, I'm pleased to be the first
to inform you that we all have reason to celebrate!
A Little History
If you're like me—one the more than 100 million Americans with ancestors
who came through Ellis Island—you were thrilled with the 1 April 2001 introduction
of the Ellis Island database (www.ellisisland.org)
with its more than 20 million indexed entries between 1892 and 1924. Perhaps
you waited patiently for the traffic to die down so you could search the site
or maybe you were one of those diehards who set their alarm for 2 a.m. in order
to have a better chance of getting in. Several months later, you may have been
fortunate enough to stumble across Morse's search tools (http://home.pacbell.net/spmorse/index.html
). Experimenting with them, you probably discovered how much easier they made
it to find those ancestors whose names had been recorded in unexpected ways.
You may have scratched your head in puzzlement when the tools took a brief hiatus
and breathed a sigh of relief when the 21 October announcement came. But since
the announcement provoked such a rush to use the new tools, it's very possible
that your initial attempts resulted in time outs and no information. The good
news is that all involved parties scrambled to make the necessary upgrades to
accommodate the heavy demand, as well as to work out a few minor kinks, and
you'll probably now be able to get in and conduct successful searches without
having to go into night-owl mode.
How It Works
There are several new features and improvements to Morse's earlier search
tools, but to me, the most exciting new toy is the gray, short form (www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellisshort.html
). I admit that I was one of those obsessed researchers playing with the website
in the wee hours when that was still necessary and it's been worth every moment
of lost sleep!
With the short form, it's possible to search the entire database by similar-sounding
names and town of origin. The Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system used to generate
lists of those with like-sounding names is especially powerful for finding the
many Ellis Island immigrants with long or complex names, prone to misspelling.
You also have the flexibility to search for first name by "starts with
or is" and "contains" and last name by "starts with or is,"
"sounds like," or "contains."
And just as with the last name, you have the option of entering "starts
with or is," "sounds like," or "contains" for town
of origin. This provides tremendous utility because the towns of our ancestors
were just as likely to be creatively spelled as their names.
The Example of Michael Zavacky
All this new functionality makes it easier to unearth those elusive ancestors.
An immigrant who went by the name Michael Zavacky in the U.S. could have entered
the country under any of a number of spellings. Michael might have been Michal,
Mihaly, Miko, or some other variation, and a name like Zavacky could be spelled
several dozen ways. Knowing this, you could enter Mi in the "starts with
or is" field for the first name and use the "sounds like" option
for Zavacky. When you launch such a search, you will be asked whether you want
only those names starting with Z, the first letter of the last name, or all
sound-alike names regardless of initial letter. If you choose the latter, you
will have many more listings to wade through, but will also surface some candidates
that would have otherwise remained hidden.
In this case, assuming you decide to limit the search to those with names starting
with Z, you would be presented with a list of 289 possibilities. Among those
you probably would not have found without some creative thinking are Zavaczki,
Zawacki, and Zavodszky. Had you restricted this search to "starts with
or is" Zavacky, you would have only found two records. On the other hand,
if you had only entered M for the first name instead of MI, you would have 949
hits to scan because you would have included all the variations of Matthew,
Martin, Mark, etc.
Building on the preceding example, let's assume that you don't even want to
look at 289 names to find "yours" and you happen to know that the
fellow you're seeking came from the town of Osturna. You might choose to enter
the name as above and add "starts with or is" O for town name. This
would produce 13 results. Three of these—the ones listed as being from Oszturnya,
Osztwmia, and Osztornya—would be obvious contenders. Using age and year of
entry data, you would probably be able to identify the one you are seeking.
Some Possible Uses
The most obvious application of this new functionality is to find a particular
ancestor who has defied discovery, such as the scenario outlined above. But
there are many other ways to exploit these search tools. For instance, you could
seek all the people who entered with a particular surname or all the people
who came from a particular village or town. I ran a "sounds like"
search for the villages of origin of my four great-grandparents who came through
Ellis Island. The Osturna search turned up 3,558 possibilities, of which 455
(or roughly every eighth name) were Osturnites. Is this list comprehensive?
Not quite because it does not include, for example, those who entered before
the town of origin was recorded or those few who had strayed off to other towns
before emigrating, but with some experimentation with Morse's tools, I managed
to find about another 65 Osturnites, including those whose first and last names
had been reversed. Before this new short form, digging out these approximately
520 villagers would have taken untold hours of searching.
You can also combine the name and town search capability to narrow a search.
This is especially handy if you are dealing with a relatively common name. I
wanted to find possible kin from Ireland, but the surname Curtin produced a
daunting 1,165 hits. When I requested only Curtins from Listowel, however, I
was rewarded with a considerably shorter list of only eight people who are much
more likely to be related to me. Even those without Ellis Island roots should
find this tactic valuable as it makes it possible to find later arrivals and
possible cousins from a particular town.
Other quirky situations are also circumvented by these tools. Knowing that the
first letters of names are especially likely to be misinterpreted and that the
letter M is often confused with N and H, I performed a "contains"
search on otczka when trying to find people named Motyczka. Sure enough, I found
an entry for Jan . . . otyczka. Wondering how many native born or naturalized
citizens of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania might have come through Ellis Island,
I searched on town name "starts with or is" Wilkes and found an astonishing
2,291 hits. Dealing with an unusual first name? Try searching just on it. Curious
about my own name of Megan which was so unusual until the last couple of decades,
I found 22 Megans, mostly from Wales as expected, but also from Turkey, Chile
and Hungary.
Try It Soon
So many items are touted as being "new and improved," but this
wonderful set of search tools truly lives up to that billing. If you haven't
already, I highly recommend that you treat yourself and spend a little time
playing with the possibilities. And if you have a success story, why not drop
me a line and tell me about it?
Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, author of Honoring Our Ancestors and In
Search of Our Ancestors, can be reached at: megan@honoringourancestors.com
. Her website features a library of many of her articles (including several
on Ellis Island research) and Honoring Our Ancestors grants at www.honoringourancestors.com
Megan's Upcoming Schedule:
4 December 2002—Virtual Lecture, Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania: "Maximizing
Your Mileage from the Ellis Island Database," 8 p.m. (ET)
7 December 2002—Book signing, Books-a-Million, Williamsburg, VA,
11 a.m.- 2 p.m., 1252 Richmond Road.
8 January 2003—"They Came to America," PBS special about the immigrant
experience in America, 9:30-11 p.m.
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