Where can you go to find ship passage records to America around 1700?

Question

My first immigrant ancestor was James Scriven. According to the HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY (1882, pp. 74-143),James made his first appearance in America between 1712-1713 on Long Island, NY. A Quaker Meeting group, led by Jacob Doughty paid for his passage and that of 10 more Quakers from England. [1]

With the help of a WikiTree member, I matched the date of birth that appeared in a number of places (1693) to a record in Colyton, England for a James born in 1691. But aside from the DOB, there is nothing proving the immigrant that shows up in Oyster Bay, Long Island, is the same person. There are records mentioning his name, but none aluding to his point of origin.

I wonder if there is a ship passenger list somewhere? Are there any more records of Jacob Doughty's Meeting group that might be helpful? After all, if James passage was paid for, he couldn't have been just plucked out of obscurity.

I got to thinking about this again when I got into the ancestors added by WikiTree member and English native, Colin Scrivens. We've wondered together if at some point our families intersect. He's listed an intriguing candidate for the immigrant James, [[Scriven-307]] who was born in 1680. His family comes from Somerset, England, has relatives whose names are repeated in the first generations of the immigrant James Scriven's family. There is only a difference in date of birth of about 11 years.

A ship's record would answer a lot of questions. I've looked for Quaker Meeting records in England with no luck. If anyone has somewhere I can check, I'd like to hear it.

(Maybe the only answer is for me and Colin to take a DNA test. But I'm not sure that would give us anything definitive either.)

(P.S. In some early record, the man's name is spelled "Scribbens")

Comments

Is this the birth record you found?

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J7WH-WBM

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Yes, although at the time, I didn't see it on familysearch.org. It was corroborated by a local volunteer who belonged to the Colyton (Devon, England) Historical Society who gave me the details you can see on the profile page I constructed. He got his names and details from local microfilm records. (Up until then, all interested parties listed immigrant James the Quaker preacher as being born in 1693.)

But as I said in the original post, without establishing that this James Scriven was the one who came to Long Island, NY., it is still just a good guess.

Did you have somewhere else to go with this, or think this detail would help in some other way? If not, I appreciate your taking a stab at it anyway.

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Nope; I just went looking to see if I could find anything further. I've been known to periodically find things when others haven't. But alas, not this time. ;-)

Answer 1

Hello Bob.

The following URLs should help you with your research:

http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/quakerstousa.shtml

 

http://www.sog.org.uk/learn/help-getting-started-with-genealogy/guide-seven

 

http://archive.org/stream/bibliographyofsh00lanc/bibliographyofsh00lanc_djvu.txt

 

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/  

 

The National Archives has a lot of Quaker documents in their archives.

All the best

Billy

Comments

The olive tree link looked like the best bet, but it didn't yield anything. I did bookmark it, however, because it might come in handy in other cases.

Thanks, Billy.

Answer 2

Here's another place to look: https://www.thehistoricalarchive.com/products/d107.html

Comments

This collection of CD's for Oyster Bay may have something. James did live for a time in Oyster bay after arriving in Flushing, NY. I'll have to look into this.

Thanks, Doug

Ordered this disk and so far I've found the adobe format difficult to search with, and, what I've been able to see has yielded nothing useful.

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Your welcome cousin Bob

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The Oyster Bay CD I sent for was very difficult to use and appeared to have no useful information--even though I was assured by the sender that my surname was at least mentioned.

Answer 3

Another One - ISTG has a few 1700 & 1 for 1600

http://immigrantships.net/index2.html

Comments

Thanks, Sandy. Tried it already. A good site, but nothing helpful to my particular query there.

Answer 4

Most such records never made it past the Ship's Log.

Answer 5

You may want to check the Library and Archives Canada website. They have passenger lists and many of the ships stopped in New York before heading to Montreal. May be helpful to see their histories of Joseph Scriven, author of hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus"?