Returning Home

Transatlantic Migration from North America to Britain & Ireland 1858-1870

Compiled and Edited by James P. Maher

•Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot), Ancestry Daily News, 22 February 2004

Back to the British Isles

Not all who left were gone for good. Some returned to visit, on business, for education; and others moved back permanently. Perhaps some returned with less honest motives. During the Fenian unrest, which occurred in Ireland and some other parts of the British Empire, the British government took particular interest in the passengers aboard inbound vessels.
Looking for Those Who Journeyed Eastward

In the family of my paternal grandmother there were fairly regular visits between Upper Canada and southern England through the 1800s. I have found several people, both direct ancestors and collaterals, temporarily resident in the homes of English cousins in various census returns.

With today's databases it is possible to spot check for traveling relations. Two types likely to help are census returns and lists of ships passengers. Some UK census databases include in their search tools a field for the subject's birthplace. As for passenger lists, we may find multiple trips for one person using inbound lists, and there is a new resource, which focuses on people who sailed back to British ports from America.

On the Ancestry.com UK Census search page, both the ranked search box and the exact match search box include fields for specifying a birthplace.
At FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org), when searching the 1881 British census, you can insert Canada, United States, Australia, or another country into the birthplace field, and the Origins Network site (www.originsnetwork.com) permits the selection of the names of numerous countries from a drop down list.

The new resource is a CD-ROM, Returning Home, compiled by James P. Maher (Eneclann, 2004). It is derived from lists of passengers made by the British government during the time of the Fenian troubles and covers a period from December 1858 to June 1870. There are over 42,000 names of people travelling from North America to several different ports in the British Isles.

The Passenger Act of 1855 included clauses to facilitate the recording of incoming passengers. The Fenians supported violent uprising as a means of gaining Irish independence. They had raised a lot of money and support in America and in 1866 launched three unsuccessful attacks on Canada. It is not surprising that the British authorities wanted to keep watch for potentially troublesome inbound passengers. There is more about the Fenians and the gathering of the passenger lists in Dublin on the CD.
A Few Search Tips

I know from contact with so many of you through lecturing and teaching that it is simply too much fun to pop names into databases. I am always encouraging you to hold back, choose databases carefully, assemble facts and have a purpose in mind. In the case of returning travelers, this is a search I encourage you to play with--try out the census databases and this new CD.
In advance of your search, examine your files and know the names (and variants), date ranges, and geographic clues that are important to identifying a direct ancestor or collateral. It would be helpful to know the occupation as well because the census and the Returning Home lists include it.

As with any search there are pitfalls. As with any index, there can be problems with transcription, and you may run into errors in place names. The warning then is to follow through from the index and examine images of anything noted. Also, you need to know that if you use the ranked search at Ancestry.com, results will include people born anywhere not just those born in the country specified in the search. On the positive side, the various indexes seem to do a pretty good job of interpreting your input (e.g., United States or Canada, even where the actual entry has the name of a state or province and not the country).

As for the CD Returning Home, be cautious about the information on the passengers. There is no way of knowing if they told the truth or how many of them stayed in the UK. Look at dates of sailing and check against census returns in countries at either end of the voyage. By the way, be sure to examine all the information on the CD--you can look at the names of everyone on a ship and find details of the ship and its voyage (ports of call, number of days, etc.)

Conclusion
Searching for those who went back, briefly or permanently, provides another opportunity to check for strays, to check for collateral lines, or to find out whether you ancestors ever made the sea voyage home for a visit. It is a strategy worth trying for any migrant family.

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