Computer terminals in the exhibit area allow visitors to search for information taken from ships' passenger manifests pertaining to their ancestors' arrival in Texas. The database includes names of passengers and members of their traveling parties, age, gender, occupation, country of origin, ship name, dates of departure and arrival, and destination in the United States. Information is also provided for a small number of ship arrivals. The ship database includes ship name, type of ship, master, home port of ship, arrival date at Galveston, port of departure, destination port, tonnage, number of immigrants, ship owner, and citation source. The museum staff transferred records from microfilm of Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service passenger manifests from the National Archives, books containing additional source material and isolated passenger lists published in The Galveston Daily News .
Additional sources continue to be researched for future inclusion in the database.
In all, the names of more than 130,000 passengers from the period 1846-1948 have been entered. The database lists only those who first disembarked in Texas. Many immigrants came through New York or one of the other East Coast ports and trans-shipped to Texas. Family legend may hand down a Texas port of entry , while immigration records reflect an Eastern port. Get answers to more frequently asked questions about the Galveston Immigration Database.