Washington Emigration and Immigration

United States Washington  Washington Cemeteries

History
In the early 1800s, traders and trappers came from Canada, Russia, Latin America, and the United States into what is now Oregon and Washington. In 1811 John Jacob Astor, an American, established the first white settlement in Oregon. Most early settlements of the 1830s and 1840s were in the Willamette River Valley. In 1843 more than 900 emigrants came to Washington from Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.

In the 1850s, gold was discovered in eastern Washington and prospectors flocked in. Major Indian hostilities, however, slowed migration. In 1860 gold was found near Walla Walla, and this brought another rush of prospectors, including large numbers of Chinese. After 1870 immigrants came from Germany, Scandinavia (especially Norway and Sweden), Holland, Britain, and the Philippines. Many Japanese immigrated to Washington starting in the mid-1880s.

The Oregon-California Trails Association is an educational organization that promotes the story of the westward migration to Washington, among other places. Their site includes a personal name index to trail diaries, journals, reminiscences, autobiographies, newspaper articles, guidebooks and letters at PaperTrail.org.

The greatest influx of settlers started in the 1880s, when transport by rail became possible. The first of three transcontinental railroads to Washington was completed in 1888. Most of the settlers of the 1880s and 1890s were from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other western, midwestern, and eastern states. Others came from Canada and Europe.

Records
The Family History Library has copies of passenger and crew lists for Seattle. Most Washington immigrants arrived in the United States through the port of New York or other east-coast ports. The Family History Library and the National Archives have records from 1820 to 1943. See United States Emigration and Immigration for more information about these records. Ancestry.com also has a collection of passenger and crew lists from Seattle.


 * A wiki article describing this online collection is found at Washington, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957 (FamilySearch Historical Records)


 * U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Passenger lists of vessels arriving at Seattle, Washington : NARA M1398, 1949-1954 (College Park, Maryland:NARA, 1956)


 * U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Passenger lists of vessels arriving at Seattle from U. S. insular possessions, 1908-1917 : Port Townsend, Seattle, and Tacoma (Washington D.C.:National Archives Central Plains Region, 1957)


 * U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Lists of Chinese passengers arriving at Seattle and Port Townsend, 1882- 1916 (Washington D.C.:The National Archives, 1988)


 * U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs records of passenger manifests inbound, 1894-1909 : Port Townsend, Tacoma, and Seattle (Washington D.C.: National Archives, Central Plains Region, 1957)


 * Seattle Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1957 at Ancestry.com ($)


 * Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, Passenger and Crew Lists of Airplane Departures, 1947-1957 at Ancestry.com ($)

Records of some ethnic groups in Washington, such as Chinese-Americans and Scandinavians, are listed in the Family History Library Catalog under::* WASHINGTON - MINORITIES

Web Sites
Tacoma Public Library Ships and Shipping Index to 13,000 individual records (as of July 2004) of ships built on the Pacific Coast and ships with a connection to the Pacific Northwest.