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In this ticket manifest and other transatlantic passenger manifests that I have seen, it appears that the answers to the question "whether having a ticket to such final destination" (in column 14) are later modified by writing "S" over the previous answer.

The following image shows that column rotated and enlarged:

Enlarged and rotated Column 14 Detail - kasper-1907-ships-manifest

What does this "S" mean?

Rob Hoare
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Tyson Williams
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  • Have you seen http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Manifests/ (Does not seem to be listed :( ) – Sam Feb 13 '14 at 22:41
  • http://www.cimorelli.com/pie/faq/emigfaq1.htm only says "Column 12 (Whether having a ticket to such final destination) - The entry in column 12 should be either Yes (ticket) or No (no ticket). " – Sam Feb 13 '14 at 23:54
  • http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kobie/adamkobe/aqwn03.htm writes ""Whether having a ticket to such final destination" is written what appears to be a cursive "S". What that means is unclear." – Sam Feb 13 '14 at 23:55
  • http://dgmweb.net/Ancillary/OnE/ImmigrationManifest.html – Sam Feb 14 '14 at 00:00
  • Could it be that the "S" is actually an abbreviation for the word "Si" meaning "Yes" in Italian, have a look at line 30 ? – Sam Feb 14 '14 at 00:07
  • @Sam888 "Have you seen jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Manifests (Does not seem to be listed :( )" No, but I agree the answer to my question isn't there. – Tyson Williams Feb 14 '14 at 03:14
  • @Sam888 Re:"...is written what appears to be a cursive "S". What that means is unclear." Like this person, when I first saw the "S", I thought it was the intended answer. However, after seeing several more passenger manifests, it now seems clear that, like other columns with many same answers in a row, that the real answer is a ditto mark and the "S", being a much larger symbol, is almost completely hiding the intended answer. I figured this out after seeing the "S" being written overtop of explicit "yes" and "no" answers. – Tyson Williams Feb 14 '14 at 03:23
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    @Sam888 "Could it be that the "S" is actually an abbreviation for the word "Si" meaning "Yes" in Italian, have a look at line 30 ?" No, I don't think so. I am seeing this "S" on passenger manifests for people from many different countries...not to mention "S" being written over top of "yes" and "no". – Tyson Williams Feb 14 '14 at 03:31
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    Not only are the "S"s overwriting the original entries created at the embarkation port, the pen is different. That suggests that they were added at a later point, to check-off something at arrival at the U.S. port or, like some of the number strings beside the name, for naturalization purposes. Maybe some thought as to the possible purpose will suggest what the abbreviation could mean. Maybe the ticket was "seen"? – bgwiehle Feb 14 '14 at 14:08
  • @bgwiehle Except "S" appears over top of both "yes" and "no", so the "no" people wouldn't have anything to show. – Tyson Williams Feb 14 '14 at 21:41
  • @Tyson Williams Just because the traveller had no ticket at departure doesn't preclude that one wasn't arranged for pick-up at arrival. My suggestion was a shot in the dark rather than an answer - other interpretations of the "S" are also possible. – bgwiehle Feb 14 '14 at 21:50
  • Note that the next column over, Q15, is By Whom was Passage Paid -- in which case "S" could stand for "self". It's difficult to tell in a black-and-white image, but the marks appear to be in a different hand and different color ink, so most likely added later than the rest of the manifest. – Jan Murphy Feb 15 '14 at 07:29
  • @JanMurphy I don't think so. All but one person answered "self" for "By whom was passage paid?" but only half of the people have their answer for the pertinent question overwritten by an "S". – Tyson Williams Feb 15 '14 at 17:18
  • Do you have access to other pages and other ship manifests of the same format? If this was an idiosyncracy of this clerk, then maybe other related documents will have a fuller form rather than a single mark. – NL7 Apr 01 '14 at 21:48
  • It's possible that S is the initial of the clerk filling out the form, where S means confirmation that the ticket was seen by S. Alternatively, maybe S means Saloon or Steerage, as in the class of ticket. – NL7 Apr 01 '14 at 21:52
  • @NLT This example document is just the first one I found from an image search. The actual document I care about also has these same markings. – Tyson Williams Apr 04 '14 at 10:05

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This is a very common and frustratingly undocumented annotation on Ellis Island passenger manifests but after a thorough review, I believe I have determined the meaning. My belief is that the 'S' stands for sojourn as in a 'protracted sojourn' as opposed to 'in transit' or 'transient'. In addition to wanting to document whether a person/family had a ticket to a final destination and how much money they had, they also needed to capture whether the person/family intended an extended stay with the likely intention of becoming naturalized.

This Ellis Island page has a nice overview of the years in which fields were adjusted. Records before 1897 show a column specifically for this purpose labeled, 'Transient, In Transit or intending protracted sojourn.' This appears to have been removed in 1897 in favor of a 'Whether Having a Ticket to Final Destination' column that gets a yes or no answer. Annotated in between this column and the 'By whom was passage paid column' or often atop the former was placed the mark of 'S' in question. You'll notice that groups that traveled together got a larger S covering multiple rows. Also, people with the final destination of New York or close areas are the ones to most often did not have an S. This makes sense in that they were likely visiting such areas as tourists and intended to return home versus someone with a final destination listed as somewhere in middle America that might possibly be more likely to stick around.

In surveying many pages and manifests, I have definitely seen that there is no pattern related to how much money the person had, whether they had a ticket to the final destination or not and who paid for the ticket.

Lastly, the intermediate pages between manifest entries around 1907 contained a page titled 'INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING ALIEN MANIFESTS' that describes the columns on the sheet. Unexplainably, there is a crossed off entry on some sheets that is inserted in between the columns of interest here (final destination and whether having a ticket). I was able to locate a few sheets where the cross-out pattern was very light such that I could read the text below. It reads, "Aliens coming to the United States only for a temporary sojourn, not intending to pass through in transit, should be recorded in this column as tourists by destination." I am not sure why this note was crossed off but it seems to describe the area of interest.

Manifest Instructions Snippet - Ellis Island 1907

jagat
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