Immigration Research Case Studies

Immigration research is sometimes the most vexing work that a family historian encounters. Upon arrival in the U.S., immigrants faced language barriers, a whole new set of governmental regulations to learn, and in the quest to find employment immigrants often moved from place to place frequently. 

Even in early American history, when there were periods of rapid immigrant influx, resident citizens sometimes developed negative sentiments toward the immigrants. Sometimes, for this reason, or in cases where the family's surname was difficult for English tongues to pronounce, immigrants would change their given and surnames. This Americanization of names allowed the immigrant to be more rapidly and easily integrated into American society. Any or all of these factors could possibly play into your immigrant research, so you might have found (or will find) that locating records for your immigrant ancestor is a tricky endeavor. Because there are so many more variables involved with immigrant research, it can be challenging no matter what year they arrived or for what reason it was that they came.

We hope you enjoy reading through these two projects, which are shown as 'page links' in the navigation bar at the top right of this page (or, click the links, below). We sincerely thank our valued clients who have given us permission to reprint some of this material. We hope our clients and your family enjoy this Internet presentation.

Strenk in Poland              Tierney in Ireland

Natalie Cottrill