Migration Records

While searching for pioneer ancestors, try using these useful and free migration sites:

The Mormon Overland Travel, 1847-1868, is the most complete listing of individuals and companies in which Mormon pioneer emigrants traveled west to Utah from 1847 through 1868. It is an incomplete listing, as rosters have not been found for all companies. It also identifies sources to learn more about the experiences of each company. You can search for a specific person using the search or you can browse the list of companies alphabetically or chronologically. 

The Mormon Migration website offers the inspiring first person accounts of over one thousand international converts who turned their faces toward Zion from 1840–1890. The autobiographies, journals, diaries, reminiscences, and letters link to over 500 known LDS immigrant voyages and they provide a composite history of those who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, traveling by land and water to gather to Zion. Immigrants from 1840–46 gathered to Nauvoo, Illinois. Beginning in 1847, the Saints, driven west, gathered in the Salt Lake Valley. The immigrant accounts of their travels to the Great Basin describe not only their experiences crossing the oceans, but also their trek to frontier outfitting posts, and entry into the Salt Lake Valley (1847–1869).

The Ellis Island Archives: More than 22 million passengers and members of ships' crews entered the United States through Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1892 and 1924. Information about each person was written down in ships' passenger lists, known as "manifests." Manifests were used to examine immigrants upon arrival in the United States. Now you can search these millions of records for information on individual Ellis Island passengers.