From 1873 until the late twentieth century the Holland America Line (HAL) carried businessmen, tourists and emigrants to and from America, Canada, South America and Europe. Between 1880 and 1920 approximately one million Eastern Europeans were travelling to the New World. The HAL company operated ticket offices in Bulgaria, Latvia and Russia, where tickets could be bought for the train to Rotterdam, the boat to America and again by train to any station in the United States. Through WieWasWie the passenger lists from 1900 to 1969 are made digitally available. At present, the lists from 1900 to 1920 are indexed. These lists do not contain the names of the crew members, they may be processed in a later stage.
Useful resource
As part of a joint project of the CBG|Center for family history and City Archives Rotterdam volunteers are busy indexing the passenger registers of the HAL. Currently the lists from 1900 to 1920 have been indexed and made accessible. They registers are a useful source of information for genealogy researchers, historians and other interested parties. One can find, for example, the destination of the journey, the fee paid for the trip and the number of people travelling together. Also remarkable things and incidents can be found on the scans.
Available data
The passenger lists were used to register the reservation details, like the names of the persons making the booking, the number of cabins and passengers, the place of departure and arrival, etcetera. When a person booked a cabin for several people his name was registered, but not always the names of the other passengers. Sometimes only the first names were registered, sometimes full names and sometimes letters and titles. The next examples are possible:
- Mr. and Mrs. Anton Philips
- Sister Mary Isabel
- Mr. & Mrs. R.G. Wright
- Mr. Ronald and Mrs. Geraldina Wright
- Mr. Wright & 2 nurses
The names of passengers are accessible only individually if they were registered with their own name. So Mr. and Mrs. Anton Philips are not indexed as 2 persons. Also Mr. Wright & 2 nurses is indexed as one persons name. But Mr. Ronald and Mrs. Geraldina Wright and indexed with two names.
It is always nice and helpful to view the scans. You can view the scan results by clicking on "Go to source" above the thumbnail on the right. Through the source page of the City Archives Rotterdam you can immediately see the correct scan. It is also useful to inspect the previous scans, because of the information about the cabin class that people booked.
Sometimes you will find passenger names across the scans. These are usually disembark lists, bearing the names of passengers who were on a stop for the remainder of their journey. These lists are occasionally available and not complete and therefore not indexed.
How to find appropriate list?
When you search in WieWasWie you can use filters to minimize the number of results. To find the passenger lists filter the results by organization City Archives Rotterdam and the document type Migration. If you are looking for a particular person that cannot be found by using "extended search", try to find the person name with "simple search".
Since the passenger lists are not made for the purpose of indexing them 100 years later, you can find the same name several times on different lists. These names can relate to the same person, but also to different people. Further research is necessary to give certainty.
Ellis Island
On the Ellis Island Foundation website passenger lists are also indexed. However, these are only indexed for arrivals until 1957. And they only concern the arrivals in New York, while the HAL ships visited many more locations in Canada and South America. The HAL lists also recorded the destination locations of the passengers, extremely useful for further research. Nevertheless, the website may well serve as an additional reference, because all incoming persons were registered individually.
