Old passenger lists now posted online
Associated Press
It's now possible to find out about people who came to Hawai'i in the first half of the 20th century.
Ancestry.com announced yesterday that it has posted online a collection of more than 1.4 million records, called "Honolulu Passenger Lists, 1900-1953." The lists haven't been available online until now.
The records of passenger arrivals in Honolulu include information such as name, birth years, ethnicities, ports and dates of arrival and departure, as well as ship or airline name.
The collection includes such familiar names as John Wayne, who arrived in Honolulu on March 19, 1952, aboard the ship Lurline for the filming of "Big Jim McLain," the company said.
Other notables include Shirley Temple in 1935, Cary Grant in 1938 and Rita Hayworth in 1953.
The lists also show that Bette Midler's father, Fred Midler, arrived in Hawai'i in 1940 aboard the ship Washington. She was born in Honolulu five years later.
The company also announced an expansion in its relationship with the National Archives and Records Administration, enabling the company to digitize NARA collections at a new facility in the Washington area.
"Our 10-year relationship with NARA goes far beyond digitizing documents," Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan said. "The new facility and expanded relationship with the National Archives enables us to scan millions of paper records, carefully preserved for decades at NARA, and put them online to help millions of Americans more easily unlock the stories of their family's past."
James Hastings, director of access programs at NARA, said it would be too expensive for the agency to digitize its enormous volume of historical records.
