{"id":52729,"date":"2019-09-17T11:15:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=52729"},"modified":"2019-09-17T11:16:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:16:20","slug":"i-know-the-date-what-else-can-i-learn-about-their-trip-to-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/i-know-the-date-what-else-can-i-learn-about-their-trip-to-america.html","title":{"rendered":"What Else Can I Learn about Their Trip to America?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newspapers are pivotal for learning about your ancestor\u2019s voyage to America. To find out more, search GenealogyBank<\/a> for newspaper articles about the ship itself.<\/p>\n

Genealogists usually find the name of the ship from family stories passed down over the generations, naturalization records, or from the passenger lists that are now widely available online. Once you know the name of the ship, search for newspaper articles that tracked the ship from overseas to America.<\/p>\n

Newspapers routinely reported on ship movements because shipping had a direct impact on business and the economy.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I found about my ancestor William Kemp\u2019s trip to America onboard the ship Benjamin Adams<\/em>. One article told me that his ship left Liverpool, England, on 24 August 1853.<\/p>\n

Digging deeper I found that this was a tough trip.
\nThis Weekly Herald<\/em> article tells me that the voyage took 56 days with 620 passengers on board. That\u2019s a lot of passengers.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Weekly Herald (New York, New York), 22 October 1853, page 344<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fifteen of them died during the voyage.
\nWow. That\u2019s incredible. Making the trip to America then was not easy.<\/p>\n

More details: The article says that a few weeks into the trip, on 10 September 1853, the ship was hit by a storm suffering major damage:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026while laying to under a close reefed topsail in a heavy gale from the NW, lost all three topgallant masts, closed reefed mizen [sic] topsail, foresail, mainsail, stern boat, and received other damage.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking on the Internet I found a diary of Rasmus Neilsen<\/a> who traveled to America on the same ship just a few months after William Kemp did. According to his diary they boarded the ship on Sunday, 22 January 1854. Their family is fortunate to still have a copy of his journal that records the story of their trip to America.<\/p>\n

Wow.
\nThis diary gives interesting details about his trip:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have good accommodations and good beds. We got our provisions: 2\u00bd pounds white bread, oat meal, wheat meal, tea, sugar, salt \u2013 more than we need \u2013 and 3 gallons water.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I assume that this was similar to William\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

Five days later on Friday, 27 January 1854, he records they were:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026towed out of harbor by a tug about two miles and lay there\u2026 We are waiting here to sail and hope the wind will soon blow from the east. Myself and wife and all five children are all well. Thank the Lord there is no sickness on board.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Source is: Manuscript Number 6006 (Typescript), pp. 109 in the Church Historical Department Archives<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s interesting.
\nThey boarded the ship and were towed from the pier waiting for the right wind so they could set sail.
\nThey moved by wind power.<\/p>\n

Newspapers reported on that same process when William was waiting to set sail.<\/p>\n

Here is the report that the ship Benjamin Adams<\/em> had moved from the dock and into the Mersey River ready to head outbound \u2013 waiting to move up the river with the aid of a tugboat to direct it safely to the open ocean.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Portland Weekly Advertiser (Portland, Maine), 13 September 1853, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rasmus Neilsen recorded that:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Sunday morning we passed a large cutter drifting without men or sails. It had been lost in the storm Saturday night. It looked awful to see the water washing over it, and the sails and rigging hanging in the water. Who went down with it, the Lord only knows.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the storm damage the Benjamin Adams<\/em> experienced just months earlier during William\u2019s voyage, it must have been riveting, while they were at sea, to come close enough to see another ship so damaged that it was abandoned and adrift on the open ocean.<\/p>\n

Genealogy Tip:<\/em><\/strong> You can do this. Dig into old newspaper accounts and preserved diaries to learn more about your ancestor\u2019s trip to America and the experience of other emigrants as they made the trip on the same ship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Thomas Jay Kemp searches old newspapers to learn about his ancestor William Kemp\u2019s voyage from England to America in 1853.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52617,"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":[12,2719,2020,2698],"class_list":["post-52729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-shipping-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/illustration-0912-2019-featured-graphic-liverpool.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729","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=52729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}