Holland-America Passenger Lists 1900-1974

A look today at a new (to me) collection: the Holland-America Passenger Lists 1900-1974. This collection is digitized and made searchable at the Rotterdam City Archive (Gemeentearchief te Rotterdam), Netherlands.

This collection also includes rare departure records from New York. Search the digitized and indexed records from the Archives of the Holland-America Line (HAL) (Collection #318-04).

Archives of the Holland-America Line

Holland-America offered transatlantic trips. Their profits were made not from expensive cabin-class tickets. Instead, low one-way fares for emigrants from Europe to the US literally kept the line afloat. Beides Dutch immigrants from Netherlands, roughly one million Eastern Europeans sailed to the US on Holland-America.

In 2018, reporter Marcia Tap interviewed archivist Anne Jongstra of the City Archives:

Jongstra picks up the passenger list of the SS Rotterdam in 1910. “This list contains a lot of Polish names. Many Polish Jews traveled to New York via Rotterdam. The list also shows that they booked their trip in Poland. ”

“Between 1880 and 1920 about one million Eastern Europeans moved to America via Rotterdam. The Holland America Line had offices [in] Bulgaria, Latvia and Russia. Tickets could be bought for the train to Rotterdam, the boat to America, and again the train to every station in the new world.”

Holland-America Passagiersstaten

Passenger lists include the ship, ports, names of passengers, class of travel, and how much the trip cost. Passenger lists from 3 May 1900 through 14 October 1974 are digitized and available for browsing. Crowd-sourced indexing via Vele Handen (Many Hands) is ongoing. So keep checking if you don’t find your emigrant at first.

Passenger List, SS Noordam departing New York, 7 Mar 1911, Passenger registers, New York-Rotterdam line (eastbound): 1911, June-April, 01-01-1911 to 31-12-1911 (318-04.1377 ) https://bit.ly/3dmakOi.

Searching Holland-America Passenger Lists 1900-1974

Search by last name, first name, departure port, keyword, and/or span dates at the Rotterdam archive site. Wildcard searches are supported. Discover a list of all ports for Holland-America ships on the site. Ports with the most records include Rotterdam, New York, Vienna, Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Hamburg.