Name change at Ellis island?

Question

when my great-great-great grandparents came to the u.s. there name was changed a bit at ellis island. from heedrick??? to hedrick , although i'm not sure i spelled the 1st. name right. how can i find out the origanl spelling of my last name before they messed it up at ellis island??

Answer 1

It's a common belief that "someone at Ellis island changed our name". But when you actually pull the records you find that the spelling changes usually came from someone back in the homeland or the clerk on the ship who prepared the documents for the immigrants to present to Ellis island.

If you believe your ancestors came through Ellis island, then they came over in a very short period of time between 1892 and 1923. They had to jump through huge hoops to ever get on the ship that brought them over, from getting visas just to leave their hometown, to getting visas to leave their home country to get to the port city, then another to leave that country and get on the ship. They had to buy all of their own cooking utensils until the early 1900s and did their own cooking onboard the ship. When they got on the ship, they had to present their papers to the shipping line, who kept them until the passengers were ready to disembark. While they holding the papers, the shipping line copied all of the names into the passenger manifest and prepared a card that was pre-printed by the US government and that card was what the officials at Ellis island used to prepare immigration forms. This is where the "name changes" were likely to occur. Bad handwriting, spelling mistakes, confusion in records between one passenger and another led to the majority of "name changes". The clerks at Ellis island just read the names off of the cards that were pinned to the immigrant's lapel and matched that up with the page number and line number on the ship's manifest. Also understand that legally it was their visa from their homeland that was their legal identification until they were naturalized...not the records from Ellis island.

Also know that 1st and 2nd class passengers on the ship didn't go through Ellis island. They were still taken to the original immigration facility at Castle Clinton in Manhattan. So even if your family came over during that period, they may not have gone through Ellis island if they had enough money for a cabin.

To find your family's original name, you start by finding their Declaration of Intent and Naturalization petition. They had to live in the US a minimum of 5 years to get American citizenship. You can also use the federal and state census records to identify both the year of arrival in the US (though many are goofed up if people were bad at math) and the year of naturalization.

Next find the passenger list for them and see what the name lists there. Also check it against similar names on the same ship. The manifest (at the very least) will tell you the country from which they last lived and the port they sailed from to come here. But it may also tell you their hometown.

From here you go back to the port town. As long as it wasn't Bremen/Bremenhaven the exit visas from nearly all of the major European ports still exist. Hamburg put many online. LeHavre has them in the Normandie archives. Southampton is disorganized in the early 1800s, but after that they're in good order and filmed by the LDS. Trieste is also in good order and filmed by the LDS. Rotterdam is a dream to search as they've got so many of their records online with the original image attached. Amsterdam isn't as modern, but their records are in the main archives in Amsterdam.

Hedrick/Haedrick/Heedrick is pretty clearly a Germanic name. When they left will determine how easily you'll find their exit visas and travel visas. If they were from Germany proper, then we hope they came after 1881 when the unified Germany was keeping standardized records, all of which are in a nice archives and being filmed by the LDS (it's going to take them 5 years to finish, but eventually they'll have them all). If it was pre-1881, you'll have to search through the smaller archives for each of the previous German states, like Prussia, Bavaria, Wuertemberg, etc.

If they were Swiss, then the records are in very safe keeping in one of the kanton archives, but aren't online and can't be requested by mail. Either you or a volunteer has to go get them (not that it's a bad vacation).

If they were Dutch, then your life is going to be extremely easy and you'll find everything you need either at Genlias.ne or in the Amsterdam archives. Amsterdam is the only archives in the Netherlands that hasn't put all of its records into a searchable database.

If you need any help, let me know. I love searching that part of Europe.

Answer 2

Hey Mtbiker,

This is very common. Soundex may help, and Family Search and Ellis Island both use a version of that. The soundex system is explained in the first site, but you may want to simply type in the name at Family Search with EXACT SPELLING turned OFF. The sals.edu site has an explanation about names changing like this.

HEADRICKS, Headrick, Heydrick, Heedrick are all found there.

Take the Ellis Island record and go back to the origin according to the record where that person resided. See if you can match records to names there.

Answer 3

I'm not sure what you've tried, but have you searched Ellis Island records directly? They have a free database that allows you to search ships passenger lists. Another great genealogy site is: www.familysearch.org. It's run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and they have a HUGE genealogical database. It's a place to start anyway. Also, it's highly unlikely that the name was changed BY Ellis Island officials. Although your ancestors may have chosen to change their name for employment or assimilation reasons, Ellis Island employed hundreds of translators and, most of the time, passenger lists and identification documents were created in the emigrant's home country. I hope you have luck.

Answer 4

There is a database of immigrants whp passed through Ellis Island at www.ellisisland.org. You can look up your ancestor there.
For the record, the staff at Ellis Island "messed up" far fewer names than people claim. Many name changes were the decision of the immigrants themselves, to appear more "American" or make the spelling conform to the pronunciation.

PS - Heedrick is a common Dutch surname and is pronounced "HAY-drick" in Holland.

Answer 5

>>Many people actually did have their last names changed by harried officials at Ellis Island who weren't familiar with the spellings/pronuncians of Eurpean names. It happend a lot.<< Dresden, I hate to bust people's long believed stories in their families, but this is a MYTH. Names were NEVER changed by immigration officials at Ellis island because staff members weren't familiar with spelling/pronunciations. This is a very very common myth that needs to be busted.

Answer 6

they have documents in ellis island. go check them out.