UK Outgoing Passenger Lists

Passenger manifests for those coming into the United States can be easier to locate than the outgoing passenger lists from the country of origin.

I was able to confirm the ship that brought Bridget (Delia) McMahon to the United States, and know the date as described in the blog post Finding Single Irish Women Immigrants to New York City . Recently, during a free period of access to Ancestry UK, I decided to find Delia’s record in the Outgoing Passenger Lists. It proved to be a slight challenge, with a reminder to be flexible and creative in our search terms.

The database on Ancestry UK is UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960. My plan was to search only that one database. Since I knew the ship and the date, I thought it would be simple.

I searched for Bridget McMahon, then used some variations on her first name that I had already seen such as: Bridget, Bdgt

These variations were also tried with variations of her surname, including McMahon and Mc Mahon (space after the “Mc”). All variations gave the same results.

The final answer was to use a wildcard: B*t McMahon

The first result shows an exciting variation: Bogt McMahon

Clicking to view the record brought me to this page.

The details for this passenger list are:

The next step would be to find the first page of the passenger list, which typically contains information about the ship and its voyage.

This record documented the beginning of Delia McMahon’s trip from Ireland to her life in the United States. It was also a good reminder to always remember wildcards.