Research tips for Ellis Island search
Most of people from United States researching their family history probably know Ellis Island database. Is a huge database of people coming to America via Ellis Island. I'm not living in US but I know that some of my ancestors at the and of XIX century and beginning of XX century were traveling to America and staying there for shorter or longer period of time. After that they return back to Jurgow. My family history is currently not described very well. I have still a lot of things to do. I hope I will finished it sometimes.
I try to search for my ancestors in this database. Unfortunately I found there many spelling mistakes. There are spelling mistakes at the original manifests pages because not everybody know how name of town or they surname have to be spelled correctly. Probably also officers have problem to understood names of towns and surnames. Another spelling mistakes were introduced when names were rewritten from old passenger records into electronic form. It's good that there are also original manifest pages, where everybody can check information. Search mechanism in Ellis Island database is also very good. Here I want to give only few tips for people researching family history using this database.
Research of my family is currently focus on Jurgow (Poland) area, I know that my ancestors was living also in other places like Kezmarok or Lubica (Slovakia). Last times I also discover after talk to my grand mother that some members of my family can live at Bobrov (Slovakia). But go back to Jurgow.
Current name is: Jurgów, but name of town can be written also in Slovak: Jurgov or Hungarian: Szepesgyörke (sometimes only: Györke). In the table below you can see also different spellings for town name:
| Correct spelling | Wrong spelling found in database |
| Jurgow | Jurgo, Furgow, Surgow, Yurgow, Yurgo, Turgow, Yurgaw, Twigo, Turgo, Jorgon, Teirgo |
| Jurgov | Fosgoo, Jurgo, Yurgov, Yurgo, Jurgos, Turgov, Turgo, Jorgon, Teirgo |
| Szepesgyörke | Szepesgyorke, Szepes Gyorke, Gyorke |
As you can see simple name can have many variations. Also other town names from Spis area are not spell correctly. I hope during my research I will put here also names for other villages from that area.
I connect different spelling of town name only using family names. It means that if I found eg. Gombos from Turgow than I check a full passenger list usually there are also other people coming together from same area. If the names of other people were also well known Jurgow's names than Turgow must be Jurgow. This was the basic principle of my name comparison.
Destination in United States
List here is not complete, I just start to create it. On this list you can read a common destination for people comming from Jurgow.
Chicago, IL
Clarence, PA (mainly Gombos)
Dunbar, PA
Egypt, PA
Pottstown, PA
Youngstown, OH,
Bridgeport, CT
Trenton, NY
NJ
List is not complete and I will hopefully extend it in the future. Some of the city names I was unable to read. It seems that at least for my ancestors most common state in United States was Pennsylvania and Illinois (as for most of people).