I love immigration and naturalization records. This amazing UK, Outward Passenger List1 is from Ancestry.com. It shows my great-grandfather, Carl Albert Gillberg, with his step-daughter Judith, and daughter Margaret. See their names and information in the red box? Here's a close-up view.
Information gleaned from this document:
- Name of Ship – Canada
- Date of Departure – September 9, 1909
- Where Bound – Quebec and Montreal
- Carl's port at which he contracted to land – Montreal
- Port of Departure – Liverpool
- Carl's profession – Mechanic
- Carl's age – 27 years old
- Judith's age – 11 years old
- Margaret's age – 7 years old
So, of course looking at this document raises some questions for me.
- Carl and his family lived in Eskilstuna, Sweden. He and his daughters would have had to travel to Liverpool, England, the port from which they left for the United States. How did they get to Liverpool? And where did they stay before the ship left?
- Why was Carl's profession listed as a mechanic? On two other documents he is listed as a tinsmith.
- Carl's 1924 Declaration of Intention states that he entered the United States on September 18, 1909 at the Port of Chicago in Illinois. But on a different passenger list, there is a handwritten note near Carl's name stating the following – Detroit 9-19-09 C. P. Ry. Through which port did Carl enter the United States? The Google Map below shows the relation of Montreal to Detroit and Chicago.
I did a Google search for "C P Railway" and Canadian Pacific Railway came up as an option. Here's a map from the Library of Congress that shows some of the Canadian Pacific Railway lines, particularly from Montreal, Canada westward. It appears that the ports of Detroit and Chicago were part of the Canadian Pacific Railway lines. So, now I'm not sure if Carl entered the United States at the Port of Detroit or the Port of Chicago.
Unfortunately, these questions may remain unanswered. But what I do know is that Carl and his daughters did travel across the Atlantic Ocean in 1909, leaving Carl's wife, Hilda, and another daughter, Naomi, back in Sweden. Hilda and Naomi would emigrate from Sweden to the United States the following year.
The family settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, where my grandmother, Ingrid Anna Gillberg, was born. Years later they moved to California, where Carl and Hilda became citizens of the United States of America.
Thanks for reading!
Jana
© 2013 Copyright by Jana Last
1 Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Outwards Passenger Lists. BT27. Records of the Commercial, Companies, Labour, Railways and Statistics Departments. Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England. ↩
