Ancestry.com Canadian Border Crossings

Ancestry.com has added the Canadian Border Crossing (1895 to 1956) to its already huge immigration collection at Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1956

PROVO, Utah, March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, today announced the addition of the first and only online collection of more than 4 million names of individuals who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border between 1895 and 1956.

This is an important but often overlooked immigration route since passage was generally cheaper to travel to the U. S. via Canada. It was also an easier way to gain access to the U.S. so some passengers arrived in Canada with the intention of heading straight to the United States.

These new records at Ancestry.com include both immigrants who first sailed to or settled in Canada before continuing to the U.S. as well as U.S. and Canadian citizens (after 1906 only) crossing the border.

The records include more than 100 ports of entry including Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Detroit, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.

Some of my Irish ancestors immigrated to the United States via Canada. They lived in Canada for 10 years before entering the U.S. in 1840, well before records were kept for Canada/U.S crossings. But my ancestors chose Canada for the same two reasons people did much later. First, the fare was cheaper and second, as Irish citizens traveling to Canada in the 1830s, they would still be under the UK.

More passenger lists can be found at Passenger Lists to USA including the Great Lakes Crossings from Canada to the US.