Emigration of the Poor

Many immigrants went under their own steam or to join relatives already in the country.

During the Irish famine most of my great grandmother's family emigrated directly to the USA, but her father, the eldest, was married with children and couldn't afford fares for all his family and came to the UK instead, as his children grew up many of them saved the money to emigrate to join the family in the US. My grandmother gathered the money for her fare, but then fell in love in the UK so married and stayed here.

We traced family through the Ancestry passenger list sources and Census returns in the USA.

I didn't know they could be sponsored. Some of our ancestors went to Canada as missionaries in the early 1900s. We found ship's records online on Ancestry and also found a photograph of some of the family who went later which had been published in the local newspaper in 1925.

That's a thought, thank you. I suspect it was a religious charity as it would explain a baptism at age 16...something to pursue...

mollie my great grandmother and her youngest son were sponsored (if that's the right expression) by the Salvation Army. This was 1915 so later than where you are searching. They might be more helpful with archives etc.

I emailed our county archive a year or two back and got a vague and unhelpful reply. I know where they sailed from etc but not which charity helped them. Perhaps I asked the wrong questions

Do you use your local family history archive? I found the people who work in them are really knowledgable and have so much information. I phoned the Lewisham LH library on several occasions and they were really helpful. Not about emigration though. Where would people leave from to go to Canada, somewhere like Southampton or Liverpool? Might be a start.