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[TSL] Sue's Success story
Sue Swiggum <swig@ns.sympatico.ca> on 06/20/2010

Yesterday was a wonderful day  ... I apologise ahead if this gets a little long

I have been searching for the passenger list for my ggrandfather's 
immigration to the US for at least 15 years.  In the meantime I have been 
able to help countless others find their ggrandfather &c. through this 
email list and TheShipsList website, but I kept coming up empty for myself 
and had become resigned to never being able to find it.

A couple of years ago, my cousin in Australia who has been a tremendous 
family researcher, beginning in the days when we had to do all our 
genealogy research with letters, money orders and self-addressed envelopes, 
had heard me talk about Ancestry.com so decided to subscribe when she 
spotted the links on my website, TheShipsList.  What a happy day that 
was.  She is retired, so has been able to find some fabulous stuff for us, 
and checks out the "new" databases regularly.  About 6 weeks ago she found
...Selected U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1966 (Indexed in World 
Archives Project)... and popped Charles Tapscott name into it  ... 
bingo!   It said he Naturalized in Portsmouth NH in 1868 and so she sent 
for the Certificate and kept it secret until it arrived, two days ago.   It 
did not add any real new information, however it did say he was from 
Devonshire and included his signature (with which we are very familiar), so 
that confirmed that he was OUR ggrandfather.

What puzzled us was that it said he arrived in the US Dec 22 1854 (no port 
of arrival indicated).  I said that the day-month was so very precise, that 
probably it was correct and remembered because it was only 3 days before 
Christmas, but I said we couldn't be sure of the year as the actual year is 
often the most misremembered part of the date.
While in the US he married in 1860, and raised a family in the New England 
states, so I plugged through all the small east coast ports thinking if he 
came into Portsmouth in 1854, then those passenger lists from 1853-1856 are 
missing, in fact, after I checked all the small ports Maine, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut and there was no 1854 surviving 
for any, except Bristol & Warren RI, but December was missing.  So then I 
spent a long time checking Boston Dec 1854, list by list and was feeling 
very resigned to going back to no record surviving, when I decided to try 
New York and simply typed in .....

Cha*   b. 1832   English   1854

Imagine my shock and delight, when up he popped, hiding in plain sight, on 
the EXACT date 22 Dec 1854 aboard the LADY FRANKLIN from Liverpool.   He 
was indexed as  ..." Charles Sapscot "... and I wondered how I could have 
ever missed that before.   I thought I had tried every imaginable 
combination, but obviously I hadn't.  New York passengers lists 1820-1957 
has a red - Updated!  notation, which may account for him showing up now, 
but probably it had more to do with not thinking he could have arrived that 
early ** and the port of arrival was unexpected.

**  I wasn't planning on mentioning this, but I don't think my 
ggrandfather's reputation deserves to be protected anymore.  We didn't 
think he arrived that early because he had married in Devon on 19 Jul 1853 
and they had a son on 05 Apr 1854 ... they did NOT accompany him.

Well, if there is any moral to this story, it is that just when you think 
you know most of the facts about your ancestor(s), they are sure to 
surprise you.  ;-}

Sue
-- 
TheShipsList Website
http://www.theshipslist.com/


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