Finding the Names — Installment 97 (Roll 12, 1848) — FREE

Finding the Names — Installment 97 (Roll 12, 1848) — FREE

753 more entries transcribed name by name from the National Archives' own scans — Roll 12, images 121–240, the inward manifests of late 1848. 740 named, 13 unnamed, on 61 manifests.

This book first pays a debt. Installment 96 closed with the brig Union's second October manifest missing its collector's certificate, and Rachael's baby — the infant who died on the passage — carried in her mother's line until the papers could be read. The certificate stands at image 121, the very first paper of this book: Collector Marriott certifies the packet "being 15 in number," and Inspector Jenkins examined the list "by calling each and all by Name." Fifteen is exactly the fifteen written lines — so Rachael's infant is not separately counted in the official number, and no correction to Installment 96 is owed. The answer was simply later paper, as it so often is.

Also in this book: the barque Elizabeth's 133 people on one hull in one day under three Baltimore manifests — and her Campbell certificate counting "45 in number," a total reached only by counting three infants folded into their mothers' lines, all three rowed unnamed here; William Sidders, 28, with "Died" written beside his name on the Union's next sailing; Mary and Joseph of the steamship Galveston, papered at Galveston but never put aboard; Nanny, 10, classed "nearly White," crossing alone; a man entered as "Nat or Nathan"; and the Saranac's seven children with no names, ages or heights at all.

Every name is transcribed by hand from the original manifests. Where a manifest and its certificate disagree, both readings are printed — nothing is guessed, and nobody is tidied away.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End