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What basic information do I need to have about my ancestor before I start looking for the ship that he/she came to America on? So that I don't waste a lot of time fruitlessly searching for a ship - what information should I try to find first, before I look for the ship?
If I know a name and possible spellings of that name and a birth date, what else do I need to know in order to confidently connect them to a particular ship?
Others can speak for themselves, but everyone in my family was excited when we discovered the identity, passage rates and even a picture of a ship our ancestors traveled on over the deep blue sea. Even those folks who didn't show other interested in genealogy, had a genuine interest.
Did you know ... there is an effort underway to index ships? Check out ShipIndex.org These folks even want to help us differentiate between the Elizabeth and the Elizabeth. (If you have been on a ship quest, you'll understand what that means.)
Ships (perhaps I should say vessels) traveled from place to place on a specific voyage that took varying amounts of time. This means dates and locations are relevant to your quest.
Depending on the era, it may be quite a task to develop a reasonable estimate of the dates and locations of the travel.
The book They Came in Ships by John Phillip Colletta has a flowchart. He suggests starting with the following:
From there he suggests different types of searches, depending on the time period, and the other information you may have, such as the port of entry, the name of the ship, your ancestor's country of origin, etc.
He suggests looking for the answers to the above three questions in:
Overviews of the immigration process can be found at BYU Broadcasting and at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration, aka The US National Archives). Check their pages Clues in Census Records 1850-1940, and Clues in Census Records, 1790-1840 to see what you might learn from a careful examination of the US Federal Census.
If your ancestor was naturalized, you may be able to find the arrival date in the naturalization records. The process of finding those also depends on the time period, because of changes in the naturalization laws. See the National Archives article "Where can I find Naturalization Records?".
If your ancestor is female, I recommend the article "Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802-1940" and "Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802-1940, Part 2" from The (US) National Archives' Prologue Magazine.
In some cases women can be found in passenger lists under their maiden names, so try that as well as her married name, if you know it.
I highly recommend Joe Beine's Emigration and Immigration Records and Resources: and Stephen P. Morse's One-Step Web Pages (specialized forms for searching passenger lists, census records, etc.).
Other things to consider -- it helps to trace your ancestor's life backwards in time to narrow the time frame for a possible arrival. Make a timeline of what you know and how you know it. Be aware of where other relatives might live -- if your ancestor is on a recent passenger list, look for the column 'person going to meet in the US' to see if you recognize that person. You'll want to be able to recognize your ancestor's entry in the passenger list and be confident that you have the right person.
People rarely emigrated just once and completely by themselves. Some families went back and forth more than once -- many families were part of a chain of migration events involving multiple people from the same family or same community. Searching for the names of siblings or children or parents can find family groups traveling together -- useful if your ancestor's name happens to be indexed badly or was entirely wrong.
I am reluctant to suggest a recipe but there is a thread running through the comments that have been added to your question which can be summarised as:
Then you have a window in place and time (or a frame, you can choose your own metaphor) in which to investigate the migration. If my ancestor was in Hanover in 1863 and in Adelaide in 1871, then I know that I need to investigate shipping lines servicing what would now be called the Germany-Australia route in say 1850-1880.
Once you have defined your window then sites like the one suggested by GeneJ become useful tools in identifying the possible shipping line, then the probable ship and if you are fortunate the repository that will hold the passenger lists that you will need to examine.
