ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’ve mentioned—well, more than just mentioned, sometimes!—Lebanon County expatriate and Florida resident Ken Weaver in the “Roots & Branches” column before because he has a knack of bringing questions to the fore that would benefit other readers.

This exchange began innocently enough, with Weaver asking: “Are there lists of passengers who entered through the port of Philadelphia prior to 1727? And if there are, can you point me in the right direction to take a look at them?”

Weaver knew the short answer: The lists of passengers—actually, most of the lists are oaths of allegiances of immigrant males age 16 and older—were required beginning in 1727 due to the paranoia of the Pennsylvania colonial legislature over the growing influx of German-speaking “foreigners.”

The originals of these lists that have survived are housed at the Pennsylvania State Archives and a version of the lists was published in the three-volume book set Pennsylvania German Pioneers.

And even from 1727 onward, it was only those not already subject to the British crown whose ships needed to turn in lists and whose men needed to swear oaths, much to the chagrin of the many descendants of Scots Irish who are notoriously difficult to track.

For pre-1727 arrivals, I recommended the following long shots:

• Some naturalizations relating to men who arrived before 1727, which show up as groups of men petitioning the legislature for naturalization, document those early arrivals.
• There is an odd passenger manifest or two at Historical Society of Pennsylvania from pre-1727 ships, which should be found in its card catalog.
• Just a few Dutch notarial records of groups who essentially “chartered” ships; these records in Rotterdam are contracts between the immigrants and the ship captains They are mentioned in scholar Marianne Wokeck’s book Trade in Strangers.

Weaver’s problem is that a family genealogy book he found at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society traces his great-great grandfather’s family back to his departure from Switzerland, probably in 1720. 

“The legend goes that he and his bride of only a few days sailed from Rotterdam and en route the ship was commandeered and all the able-bodied men were conscripted for service in the navy,” Weaver wrote. His wife continued to Philadelphia and the husband followed after release from his service. 

Weaver had already covered one of the bases I recommended, having found his ancestor’s naturalization in 1743, by which time the process involved an applicant coming to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Philadelphia.

Moral of the story is that it’s a rare case when the answer to a genealogical question is a cut-and-dried one!