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Memorabilia - TeSelle Voyage to America -
S. S. Helvetia Passenger List
Ship: S. S.
Helvetia (follow link for more information about the ship)
Port of Embarkation: Liverpool, England
Date of Embarkation: October
12, 1865 (Source: Harmen Jan te Selle, Letters from America,
Letter
2, November 26, 1865)
Port of
Arrival: New York City, New York, USA
Date of Arrival: October 30, 1865
| Page 1,
S.S. Helvetia Passenger List, departing Liverpool,
England, October 12, 1865 |
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(Click image to enlarge) |
Page 1 of the
ship's manifest for the voyage embarking on October 12, 1865, reads
as follows: "List of Manifest of all the passengers taken on
board the Steamer 'Helvetia', whereof Prouse is Master, from Lpool."
The headings at the top of the Manifest are as follows:
Names
Age (Years/Months)
Gender
Occupation
The Country to which they severally belong
The Country of which they intend to become inhabitants
Died on the voyage
The complete passenger list consists
of 23 pages, with a total of 960 names of people registered on board
as they departed from Liverpool. This total is consistent with
Harmen
Jan’s letter, in which he indicated,
“After two days we came to the coast
of Ireland; there another two hundred men joined us in a small
boat. Subsequently, we were 1200 altogether on that ship.”
Only one person had the entry “Died”
next to her name in the passenger list. She appears to have been an
infant, since she is listed as part of a family, and no age is
indicated. This corresponds with
Harmen
Jan’s description in his letter, where he wrote about many
people being seasick, “but only one child in the age of six months
died.” A single death was probably a very good result during
the ocean crossing. Death at sea was likely a common occurrence, as
evidenced by the column in the passenger list pre-printed with the
heading “Died on the voyage”.
Although the scanned images of the
passenger list appear quite complete, the database contains no
scanned image of the cover sheet for the voyage, which presumably
would have shown the date of departure and the date of arrival. We
must rely on
Harmen Jan’s letter to give us the October 12 departure
date. The arrival date of October 30, 1865 appears in the database
listing, although there is no scanned source document that shows
that date.
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Page 6,
S.S. Helvetia Passenger List, departing Liverpool,
England, October 12, 1865 |
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(Click image to enlarge) |
According to a
letter
from Harmen Jan te Selle (1844-1919), he and his older brother
Jan Hendrik (1838-1921), along with Jan Hendrik’s wife Hannah
Berendina Onnink (1841-1929), departed by ship from Liverpool,
England on October 12, 1865, on a journey to New York City. All
three of their names appear near the bottom of page 6 of the
passenger list of the S.S. Helvetia:
J. H. Selle (age 27)
Hanna Selle (age 24)
H. J. Selle (age 21)
Apparently, the person recording the
names on the manifest did not feel that the "te" in the name "te
Selle" was important.
Jan Hendrik (J. H.) and Harmen Jan
(H. J.) were listed as "Laborers". No occupation was listed for
Hanna. For all three of them the destination country was listed as
"U. S." and the country of origin was listed as "Germany".
Apparently, the records were not very precise about the country of
origin.
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| Page 12,
S.S. Helvetia Passenger List, departing Liverpool,
England, October 12, 1865 |
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(Click image to enlarge) |
Harmen
Jan’s letter also mentions traveling with a man from America by
the name of “J. Vogel, who had fetched his family from Holland.”
The names of the Vogel family members appear on page 12 of the
passenger list.
Apparently, Mr. J. Vogel and
another friend were very helpful to the te Selle brothers on their
journey from Winterswijk to Liverpool. According to Harmen
Jan,
"On Saturday the 7th of October at 2 in the afternoon we left from there
[Rotterdam] for
Hull where we arrived Sunday night. But before I proceed I should let you know
that we were in the company of 2 Americans. One by the name of J. Vogel, who had
fetched his family from Holland. The other had been to Holland just for fun.
Those two were of great use to us that way, for they had a good command of
English and could speak to the people and then those men told us what we should
do. So we arrived at Hull when it was getting dark already, but they told us
just to follow them."
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Source Information:
Ancestry.com. New
York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT,
USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Original data:
-
Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York,
New York, 1820-1897; (National Archives Microfilm Publication
M237, 675 rolls); Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record
Group 36; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
-
Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at
New York, New York, 1897-1957; (National Archives Microfilm
Publication T715, 8892 rolls); Records of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
About New York
Passenger Lists, 1820-1957
This
database is an index to the passenger lists of ships arriving from
foreign ports at the port of New York from 1820-1957. In addition,
the names found in the index are linked to actual images of the
passenger lists. Information contained in the index includes given
name, surname, age, gender, arrival date, port of arrival, port of
departure and ship name.
This database is an
index to the passenger lists of ships arriving from foreign ports at
the port of New York from 1820-1957. In addition, the names found in
the index are linked to actual images of the passenger lists, copied
from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
microfilm, M237, rolls 1-675 and T715, rolls 1-8892.
Castle Garden
served as a processing station for immigrants from 1855 to 1890.
Likewise, Ellis Island served as a processing station for
immigrants from 1892 to 1954. This database includes both the Castle
Garden and Ellis Island passenger lists.
Information contained
in the index includes:
-
Given name
-
Surname
-
Age
-
Gender
-
Arrival date
-
Port of arrival
-
Port of departure
-
Ship name
It is important to
note that the port of departure listed on these passenger lists is
not always the original port of departure for these individuals. A
ship could make several voyages throughout the year, making several
stops along way. Oft times the port of departure found on these
lists is the most recent port the ship was located at prior to
arriving at the port of New York. Therefore, if your ancestors
emigrated to the U.S. from Germany, they could be found on a
passenger list coming from Liverpool, England (if, in this case, the
ship left from Bremen, Germany then continued on to Liverpool,
England before arriving in New York).
The microcopies of
the passenger lists found at NARA are arranged chronologically by
arrival date of vessel. If you do not wish to search this database
using the search template above, the images may be browsed following
this chronological arrangement. To browse the images first select
the “Year” in which you would like to search, followed by the
“Month”, and finally the “Ship Name”.
To learn about
researching in passenger records consult John P. Colletta’s book,
They Came In Ships (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1993).
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