Many ancestors came to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Genealogists with such immigrant ancestors are eager to find each immigrant’s parents and place of origin.

Your first task in trying to identify an immigrant’s parents or place of origin is to study the immigrant thoroughly in records of the adopted country. Look for vital records, especially marriage and death certificates; county courthouse records, especially probate and land records; all state and federal censuses in which the immigrant may have been enumerated; a tombstone inscription and newspaper obituaries (perhaps a copy is within the family); military and passport records; church and school records; immigration (passenger list) and naturalization records; and anything else you can find in the ancestor’s known residences in the adopted country. Study the immigrant’s children and spouse(s) in the same kinds of sources. Learn everything you can about the immigrant from family members and contemporary records. In this adopted-country research, you may well uncover the names of the parents or the immigrant’s specific birthplace—parish, town, or village. For more on these sources and on research, consult a basic guide to United States genealogy such as Unpuzzling Your Past; the immigrant-ancestor case study in chapter eleven of The Genealogist’s Companion and Sourcebook, 2nd edition; and case studies in quality genealogical journals.

If your immigrant ancestors entered the United States prior to about 1820, you may not find immigration records since the various governments did not require such records until 1820. The earlier the immigrant entered the colonies or the United States, the fewer records exist to help you determine a specific time of arrival or place of origin. Many origins can be found by studying people in the same general location and of the same surname as your ancestor. The keys to success are to keep an open mind, to be very cautious about accepting family traditions of origin or the identity of the earliest immigrant, and to research thoroughly and wisely, documenting everything you find.

When you zero in on the immigrant’s place of origin, you can acquire is a research outline to your immigrant’s country of origin (and to its language if a guide is available) from the Family History Library web site at www.familysearch.org under “Search,” then “Research Helps.” These guides are also available on the U.S. states and Canadian provinces. They help you prepare for research in ancestral locations.

Numerous books and articles discuss research in many regions and countries of the world. Library, publisher, and bookseller catalogs online give you titles of many such references; some web sites contain helpful information for research in specific countries. However, these materials do not take the place of thorough research in the adopted country first.

Note: You usually cannot jump the water to search successfully in foreign records until you have made a thorough study in the adopted country. In searching for immigration records, remember that not all immigrants came through Ellis Island, and some coming through Ellis Island were U.S. citizens returning from abroad. A very helpful site for searching the Ellis Island immigration online database (1892–1924) is www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellis.html; an alternate and more permanent access to this database and others is at http://stevemorse.org. Spelling variations and different surname usage sometimes makes the search more time-consuming and/or more difficult. This database can help you deal with those problems.