The Knowles Collection: United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925

22 September 2015

United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925

Passport applications have always been a great source of family information. Since they are filled out by living people who are providing current information regarding their own lives, they tend to be very reliable and a great source for people researching their families.
Familysearch has just added a new collection, United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925, which should make finding these records much easier. The collection, which is a combination of two different National Archives and records Administration (NARA) collections, has over 3 million images of which 1.9 million are indexed.
A great example of the information provided in the applicant is the record of Albert J. Cohen (shown below). From his application we learn that he was born on 31 Oct 1874 in Cairo, Egypt. He is married to Krisanti Cohen who was born in 1881 in Crete and that they have a daughter Mary who was born on the 27th of November 1903, also in Cairo. Further we learn the family arrived in the United States in August 1894 on the S.S. Rotterdam. The application also states that Albert was naturalized a U.S. citizen on 11 Mar 1902 in Charleston, South Carolina.

As with all databases these passport records are available free of charge at www.familysearch.org

1 comment:

Novelty Documentation ExpressMay 28, 2019 at 10:23 AM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Growth and Change

In the 12 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from 7,500 to over 1,4000,000. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jews of The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.