Ellis Island missing ship manifests

These records have been digitized and are available via some of the major genealogy subscription sites like Family Search and Ancestry. Those sites have pretty powerful search databases (by name). They do require a subscription or at least a login to access from home, though they may be available for free public use at a local library. These are the databases you want to look in, if/when you get access to Ancestry or Family Search. Ancestry requires a subscription. Family Search you can use at least partly for free, but you may have to do a login: 

Ancestry -- New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Family Search -- New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924

The website of the The Statue of Liberty—Ellis Island Foundation, Inc also has a searchable database for New York arrivals, 1820 - 1957:

In terms of your specific question about missing manifests, we are not aware of this kind of systematic attempt to catalog the surviving manifests (on the microfilm) versus listings of arrivals that were gleaned from the primary sources at the time such as the newspapers another member of the community has already mentioned. The New York Times, for example, was indeed chronicling daily ship arrivals and departures. The New York Herald was doing this as well (likely there were many others). Databases for historical newspapers such as newspapers.com or NewspaperArchive are available via subscription, or possibly at a local library. In our research rooms, one can access the Historical New York Times database through our ProQuest subscription. We also suggest looking at the pages of Stephen Morse, where search tools and further resources for researching these records have been consolidated: https://stevemorse.org/

To try and assist further in your search for your grandmother's arrival in May 1912, we also suggest pursuing her naturalization record, if you think she might have become a U.S. citizen at some point. Naturalization records can contain a lot of useful personal information including the details (ship, date) of a person's legal entry into the country. Here is our starter page for information on researching these records: https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/naturalization. If the family settled in the New York / New Jersey area, our NYC office will be happy to provide further guidance. 

We invite you to continue the conversation with community members on History Hub, but should you have follow up questions for the staff at the National Archives at New York City, please email us at newyork.archives@nara.gov so that we can assist you further.

We hope this helps with your research!

National Archives at New York City

These records have been digitized and are available via some of the major genealogy subscription sites like Family Search and Ancestry. Those sites have pretty powerful search databases (by name). They do require a subscription or at least a login to access from home, though they may be available for free public use at a local library. These are the databases you want to look in, if/when you get access to Ancestry or Family Search. Ancestry requires a subscription. Family Search you can use at least partly for free, but you may have to do a login: 

Ancestry -- New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Family Search -- New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924

The website of the The Statue of Liberty—Ellis Island Foundation, Inc also has a searchable database for New York arrivals, 1820 - 1957:

In terms of your specific question about missing manifests, we are not aware of this kind of systematic attempt to catalog the surviving manifests (on the microfilm) versus listings of arrivals that were gleaned from the primary sources at the time such as the newspapers another member of the community has already mentioned. The New York Times, for example, was indeed chronicling daily ship arrivals and departures. The New York Herald was doing this as well (likely there were many others). Databases for historical newspapers such as newspapers.com or NewspaperArchive are available via subscription, or possibly at a local library. In our research rooms, one can access the Historical New York Times database through our ProQuest subscription. We also suggest looking at the pages of Stephen Morse, where search tools and further resources for researching these records have been consolidated: https://stevemorse.org/

To try and assist further in your search for your grandmother's arrival in May 1912, we also suggest pursuing her naturalization record, if you think she might have become a U.S. citizen at some point. Naturalization records can contain a lot of useful personal information including the details (ship, date) of a person's legal entry into the country. Here is our starter page for information on researching these records: https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/naturalization. If the family settled in the New York / New Jersey area, our NYC office will be happy to provide further guidance. 

We invite you to continue the conversation with community members on History Hub, but should you have follow up questions for the staff at the National Archives at New York City, please email us at newyork.archives@nara.gov so that we can assist you further.

We hope this helps with your research!

National Archives at New York City