Holland-America Line Passenger lists are the lists of persons who booked a trip to or from Canada and the USA with the Holland-America Line during the years 1900-1969.[1]
While most people researching persons that have immigrated to the USA and Canada gravitate towards the inbound manifests they tend to forget that a similar list was constructed before leaving Europe. In addition, records of people travelling from the USA to Europe are very rare. Both of these issues are answered by this collection found in the Rotterdam City Archives.
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About this Collection
Actually, passenger list is not the right term. The Holland-America Line called them "passagestaten" and a large proportion of the passengers do not appear on them at all. Only the person who booked the trip can be found on this list. If he or she made a booking for more than one person at the same time, for example a family, only the numbers of the other travellers can be found, not the names.[1]
What Information Can Be Found Here
In addition to the information concerning the voyage (such as the name of the vessel and the date departure) you will find, among other details, the following (please note that not all fields appear in every list):
- "NAAM VAN DEN PASSAGIER" - Surname and initials (sometimes first name) of the person who booked the trip
- "GEBOEKT"
- "VAN" - departure port
- "NAAR" - destination port
- original place of departure
- information about train travel to/from the port
- address of destination
- "AANTAL" - Indication of the number of adults and the number of children who travelled with that person
- "1/1" - adults
- "1/2" - children
- "1/0" - babies
- Information about the cost of travel
How-To Use The Search on the Rotterdam City Archives Website
In order to start your search you will need to visit the Search by Passengers page on the Rotterdam City Archives website.
The first thing to note is that you do not need a to login in order to use the search function.
Simplified Search
Simply enter a search term in the search box and click "Search".
Advanced Search
The advanced search allows you to search using the following fields:
- Last name
- First name
- Departure Port
- Time period
Reviewing The Search Results
Once you have your search results there are a number of things to notice.
First of all, as the website is in Dutch and most of us use the automatic translation to other languages this may skew the results. For example when searching for the surname "Frostig" my results show a person with the surname "Frosty" if I use the automated translation option on chrome. Be aware of this!
Filters
In some cases there will be a great number of results in which case you might want to consider using filters to help you narrow things down.
Below the search box you will find three drop down lists. These are filters you may use to narrow down the results.
- Departure Point
- Departure Port
- Vessel's Name
Using the Index
Once you have found a record of interest simply click on the relevant entry in the index to get more information. Doing this will provide you with some more information as well as an option to view the scanned image.
See Also
Explore More About Holland-America Line Passenger Lists
- Passenger lists on the Rotterdam City Archives website
- Rotterdam Passenger Lists 1899-1954 on GG Archives