THIRD PARTY LIST OF ODESSA IMMIGRANTS
THRU ELLIS ISLAND

Immigrants Surname Starting with the Letter B - The First 100 Names

Read, Interpreted, and Indexed by Barbara Stephenson

The Third Party List Project, trademarked name
is designed (including copyright-protected data acquisition forms), proofed, formatted, and introduced
by Deborah G. Glassman, all copyrights 2005

Barbara Stephenson has taken on the largest single Third Party List Project for a town so far. There are over 25,000 primary emigrants claiming a last residence of Odessa who entered the United States between 1892 and 1924 at Ellis Island station of New York City. These public documents of the United States government are posted at the site of ellisisland.org which makes them even more accessible by utilizing an index created by hard-working volunteers of the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. These are hand-written manifests created by officials of the various steamship companies and filed with the immigration authorities or the custom authorities in the United States and following the requirements laid down by US law in different years. But for serious researchers, the indexes provided are simply clues to take into account when searching for immigrants from particular cities and towns. Surnames and first names have often been greatly skewed in the reading and a re-reading by someone familiar with names typical of that particular group can be a great help. Handwritng misreads such as the swapping of the initial letters L and S; J and F and T; M and W and N; I and T are all common. Which means that someone less familiar with Jewish names indexes them as Fudel and Fankel instead of Judel and Jankel; or Lore and Seizer instead of Sore and Leizer; Nelwel instead of Welwel, Teige and Tzhok instead of Feige and Izhok, et al.

Barbara went through these 100 names diligently. When a letter was difficult she looked at every entry on surrounding pages looking for a comparable letter. When she was done, I looked at some of the oddball ones and did a series of scheduled interval proof points and threw in my thirty plus years of experience reading Jewish-subject manifests to back her up. We think that you will find this material of great value and we invite you to join us in this project.

If a name was very difficult and we could offer nothing better than that given by the original indexers we went with their reading but we ask that as you use this list you send us emails confirming or challenging the readings that we have done so this project is corrected by those who are most familiar with each individual family.

There are actually Two Tables on this page. The first lists every name on the manifest that appears to be associated with the Primary Emigrant.  Each Primary Emigrant has had the spelling of their name evaluated for inclusion. The second is an extract of alphabetized names of the Third Parties. There are 100 people in the first Immigrants' list including many parties made of sizable family groups. So it is significant that the Third Parties, exclusive of other members of their Traveling Party with the same name, numbers almost that again (81).

THIRD PARTIES NAMED IN THE RECORDS ABOVE,
Sorted Alphabetically by Third Party Surname

Can you help us do more indexing or do you have a correction?  Contact us.

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Page created by Deborah Glassman
December 2005, copyright