I knew that William came to America on board the ship Benjamin Adams<\/em>, arriving 21 October 1853. He left from Liverpool, England, and arrived in New York City.<\/p>\n Since I knew that shipping was big business, I wondered if newspapers could tell me more about the movements of the Benjamin Adams<\/em> and William\u2019s trip to America.<\/p>\n In testing my search I found that the name of the passenger ship appeared multiple ways in various newspaper articles \u2013 so I strategized that I needed to search every possible variation for any mention of the Benjamin Adams<\/em>, from the spring to the fall of 1853, to make sure I didn\u2019t miss any articles.<\/p>\n To find all of the articles I needed to search GenealogyBank\u2019s archives using:<\/p>\n This should give me all references to the passenger ship and William\u2019s voyage to America.<\/p>\n [search_box]<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I found.<\/p>\n This Maine newspaper told me that by 23 August 1853, the passengers had boarded the Benjamin Adams<\/em> and the ship was positioned \u201coutward bound\u201d in the Mersey River in Liverpool.<\/p>\n This Massachusetts newspaper gave me the critical fact that the ship sailed the next day \u2013 24 August 1853. Wow \u2013 good to know.<\/p>\n Next I looked for reports of the passenger ship arriving in America.<\/p>\n Here it is \u2013 this New York newspaper reported that the ship had docked in New York on 21 October 1853.<\/p>\n The trip to New York took 56 days. There were 620 passengers \u2013 but here\u2019s where the news turned more somber.<\/p>\n The old newspaper article reported:<\/p>\n Sept. 10, while laying to under a close reefed topsail in a heavy gale from the NW, lost all three topgallant masts, closed reefed mizzen topsail, foresail, mainsail, stern boat, and received other damage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The ship was damaged in a fierce storm just 17 days after leaving Liverpool. The passengers must have been terrified \u2013 wondering if they were going to make it.<\/p>\n But there was more bad news:<\/p>\n Had 15 deaths on the passage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Significant storm damage to the ship and 15 people died? William was lucky to make it safely to America!<\/p>\n [search_box]<\/p>\n In a follow-up article a week later, the Weekly Herald<\/em> explained why so many had died on the passage. These passengers just didn\u2019t die of random causes \u2013 they died from an outbreak of cholera, which struck\u00a0 many ships.<\/p>\n \u2026it is pretty certain that the disease which carried them off was cholera. \u2026.The sickness on the Benjamin Adams was decidedly cholera.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This was a tough trip.<\/p>\n GenealogyBank\u2019s newspapers continued to tell me more about William\u2019s trip.<\/p>\n This New York newspaper mentioned that the ship Benjamin Adams<\/em> had arrived \u201cfrom Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n From Syria? They did \u2013 but before arriving in Liverpool, the ship had been in Syria.<\/p>\n This Massachusetts newspaper told me that the Benjamin Adams<\/em> had docked in Beirut, Syria, on 25 July 1853, before it went to Liverpool to pick up William Kemp and the other 619 passengers.<\/p>\n The reason for the trip to the Holy Land was explained in this Massachusetts newspaper. The Benjamin Adams<\/em> picked up artifacts there to display at the World\u2019s Fair:\u00a0 \u201can Arab plough and other agricultural implements for the World\u2019s Fair\u2026canes from the banks of the Jordan, branches from the Mount of Olives and cedars of Lebanon\u2026\u201d and apparently somewhere along the way it picked up cholera.<\/p>\n GenealogyBank doesn\u2019t just give you the names, dates and places for your family tree \u2013 it gives you the stories of our ancestors\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n You know when your ancestors arrived in America \u2013 dig in GenealogyBank and find out the rest of their stories.<\/p>\n Genealogy Tip: Search Wide Geo Areas <\/strong><\/p>\n Did you notice a pattern with the newspaper articles in this blog post?<\/p>\n There were newspapers in Maine, New York, Massachusetts and beyond that reported on the Benjamin Adams<\/em>. You want to search for this type of article and for the articles about your ancestors across all 8,000 of GenealogyBank\u2019s newspapers. To find these articles, you cannot limit your search to only the newspapers of one or two states. If you limit your search geographically, you might miss an article critical to the telling of your ancestor\u2019s story.<\/p>\n Related Articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n [bottom_post_ad]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I knew my ancestor William Kemp had come to America \u2013 but I didn\u2019t know anything about the trip itself. What was it like for him as an immigrant traveling by passenger ship across the ocean to the new frontier? Could GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives help me find the answer? I knew that William came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[8349,8351,1658,2233,12,465,2556,3358,455,878,2020,27,4818,530,3648,2698,4256,8350],"class_list":["post-10679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-benjamin-adams","tag-cholera","tag-family-history-2","tag-family-research","tag-genealogy","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-immigrants","tag-kemp","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-newspapers","tag-newspapers-for-genealogy","tag-ny","tag-passenger-ships","tag-shipping-news","tag-ships","tag-william-kemp"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"painting:](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/illustration-0522-2015-waugh-new-york-harbor.png\" "\\"illustration-0522-2015-waugh-new-york-harbor\\"")
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![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/portland-weekly-advertiser-newspaper-0913-1853-benjamin-adams.png\" "\\"portland-weekly-advertiser-newspaper-0913-1853-benjamin-adams\\"")
<\/a>![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/daily-atlas-newspaper-0910-1853-benjamin-adams.png\" "\\"daily-atlas-newspaper-0910-1853-benjamin-adams\\"")
<\/a>![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/weekly-herald-newspaper-1022-1853-benjamin-adams.png\" "\\"weekly-herald-newspaper-1022-1853-benjamin-adams\\"")
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\nWhat?
\nFifteen people died?
\nWow. Was that normal on these trips? Why did so many die?<\/p>\n![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/weekly-herald-newspaper-1029-1853-benjamin-adams-cholera.png\" "\\"weekly-herald-newspaper-1029-1853-benjamin-adams-cholera\\"")
<\/a>![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/albany-evening-journal-newspaper-1022-1853-benjamin-adams-cholera.png\" "\\"albany-evening-journal-newspaper-1022-1853-benjamin-adams-cholera\\"")
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\nI thought they left from Liverpool?<\/p>\n![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/daily-atlas-newspaper-0901-1853-benjamin-adams.png\" "\\"daily-atlas-newspaper-0901-1853-benjamin-adams\\"")
<\/a>![\"shipping](\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/springfield-republican-newspaper-1025-1853-benjamin-adams.png\" "\\"springfield-republican-newspaper-1025-1853-benjamin-adams\\"")
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