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Founded | 2000 |
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Founder | Paul K. Gjenvick |
Purpose | Genealogy, archive |
Headquarters | Atlanta, Georgia |
Website | ggarchives.com |
The GG Archives is a large, privately held archive of genealogy, [1] military, and other ephemera dating from the mid-1800s through 2000. The site has over 6,000 static web pages and 20,000 images. [2] The archives are composed of artificial collections [3] [4] of ephemera in twelve topical areas. The site has since received numerous awards. [5]
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the GG Archives supplies free, unrestricted access to historical ephemera, articles, and photographs for specific topics—primarily genealogy-related materials [6] intended for genealogists, historians, teachers, [7] [8] and researchers, covering the period of the 1880s through the 1950s. They are funded mostly through contextual advertising.
Launched in January 2000, their online collections [9] include US immigration, [10] ocean travel, military (mostly US Navy), epicurean, vintage fashions, Works Progress Administration (WPA), [11] and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19.
The site includes many original steamship passage tickets or contracts, primarily for transatlantic voyages, between 1854 and 1956. The unique primary source documents are useful for illustrating family histories and for K–12 students studying history and social studies. [12]
Known for their passenger lists, they also itemize (with images) the materials they have for each ship in the "Immigrant Ships" section under "Ocean Travel". One can expect to spend copious amounts of time on this site while traversing its many collections of historical documents and ephemera. [13]
Primary source materials can be found throughout the Archives' Immigration [14] section (covers US and Canadian immigration) including passenger lists [15] [16] and immigrant inspection cards, and are often used by schools [17] in a number of settings and topics. [18]
They also cover vintage fashions and epicurean lifestyles from past eras [19] and many period articles on most topics, including a Q&A on the World War I draft. [20]
Based on their top navigation links, the Archives' major collections include:
Immigration [21] [22] (US immigration through primary and other sources): [23] The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives records the immigrant experience [24] through essential documents, articles [25] and information on the mass migration [26] of immigrants [27] from primarily European countries to North America. [28] Immigrant documents, [29] steamship passage tickets, [30] [31] Ellis Island, Castle Garden immigrant stations, immigration laws, [32] and steerage [33] are included in this section.
Ocean Travel – Daily life aboard a steamship. [34] Discover what life was like onboard the steamship through historical articles richly illustrated with photographs and illustrations from the 1870s through the 1950s. Extensive Cunard Line [35] materials, their vintage menus collection, RMS Titanic collections, steamship lines - history and ephemera, sea captains' biographical sketches, ports of call, Student Third Class Association (STCA), [36] and ocean liner and travel brochures can be found under this category.
Military Archives. [37] Collections have focused on the United States Navy, but also include significant materials on World War I [38] [39] and the US Army. They have a large collection of US Naval Training Center graduation yearbooks, primarily Great Lakes [40] and San Diego.
Epicurean. [41] Topics cover the epicurean lifestyle and include foods, desserts, cooking terms, methods, family recipes, vintage ads (epicurean), vintage menus (ocean liners), and wedding feasts.
Vintage Fashions 1880s - 1930s. [42] Women's, teens', and children's clothing styles on board the steamships and while travelling in style and comfort.
Entertainment in the era of steamships & ocean liners. [43] Brochures, flyers, images, and articles focusing on steamships and ocean liners. Much of their focus is on motion picture production in the early 1900s.
Library . [44] Diverse collection of books primarily in reference, genealogy, maritime, and military topics.
Other notable collections: [45] Works Progress Administration (WPA), Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, biographies: Dr. Edward Jenner [46] and Thomas A. Edison, and the Bangor Punta Archives.
Paul K. Gjenvick, MAS, an archivist by trade, has a bachelor's degree in accounting from Minnesota State University and a masters of archival studies from Clayton State University. [52]
Cunard is a British shipping and cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. Since 2011, Cunard and its three ships have been registered in Hamilton, Bermuda.
RMS Laconia was a Cunard ocean liner built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, launched on 27 July 1911, with the wife of the U.S. Ambassador Mrs. Whitelaw Reid christening the vessel. Laconia was delivered to the Cunard Line on 12 December 1911, and began service on 20 January 1912. She was the first Cunard ship of that name. She was torpedoed and sunk on 25 February 1917 during World War I; 12 passengers were killed.
Steerage is a term for the lowest category of passenger accommodation in a ship. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, considerable numbers of persons travelled from their homeland to seek a new life elsewhere, in many cases North America and Australia. Many of those people were destitute in their homeland and had the minimum of resources to procure transportation. The term later widened to imply the lowest category of accommodation on a passenger vessel.
Pier 21 was an ocean liner terminal and immigration shed from 1928 to 1971 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Nearly one million immigrants came to Canada through Pier 21, and it is the last surviving seaport immigration facility in Canada. The facility is often compared to the landmark American immigration gateway Ellis Island. The former immigration facility is now occupied by the Canadian Museum of Immigration, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design as well as various retail and studio tenants.
The Norwegian America Line, was a shipping line, originally an operator of ocean liners and cargo ships. Founded in 1910, the company ran a regular transatlantic service between Norway and the United States, and later included a route to East Africa as well. Primarily due to competition from air travel, transatlantic passenger voyages were slowly discontinued during the years.
Economy class, also called third class, coach class, steerage, or to distinguish it from the slightly more expensive premium economy class, standard economy class or budget economy class, is the lowest travel class of seating in air travel, rail travel, and sometimes ferry or maritime travel. Historically, this travel class has been called tourist class or third class on ocean liners.
The Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), known in English as the Hamburg America Line, was a transatlantic shipping enterprise established in Hamburg, in 1847. Among those involved in its development were prominent citizens such as Albert Ballin, Adolph Godeffroy, Ferdinand Laeisz, Carl Woermann, August Bolten, and others, and its main financial backers were Berenberg Bank and H. J. Merck & Co. It soon developed into the largest German, and at times the world's largest, shipping company, serving the market created by German immigration to the United States and later, immigration from Eastern Europe. On 1 September 1970, after 123 years of independent existence, HAPAG merged with the Bremen-based North German Lloyd to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.
CP Ships was a large Canadian shipping company established in the 19th century. From the late 1880s until after World War II, the company was Canada's largest operator of Atlantic and Pacific steamships. Many immigrants travelled on CP ships from Europe to Canada. The sinking of the steamship RMS Empress of Ireland just before World War I was the largest maritime disaster in Canadian history. The company provided Canadian Merchant Navy vessels in World Wars I and II. Twelve vessels were lost due to enemy action in World War II, including the RMS Empress of Britain, which was the largest ship ever sunk by a German U-boat.
SS City of Glasgow of 1850 was a single-screw passenger steamship of the Inman Line, which disappeared en route from Liverpool to Philadelphia in March 1854 with 480 passengers and crew. Based on ideas pioneered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain of 1845, City of Glasgow established that Atlantic steamships could be operated profitably without government subsidy. After a refit in 1852, she was also the first Atlantic steamship to carry steerage passengers, representing a significant improvement in the conditions experienced by immigrants. In March 1854 City of Glasgow vanished at sea with no known survivors.
The Inman Line was one of the three largest 19th-century British passenger shipping companies on the North Atlantic, along with the White Star Line and Cunard Line. Founded in 1850, it was absorbed in 1893 into American Line. The firm's formal name for much of its history was the Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York Steamship Company, but it was also variously known as the Liverpool and Philadelphia Steamship Company, as Inman Steamship Company, Limited, and, in the last few years before absorption, as the Inman and International Steamship Company.
SS Abyssinia was a British mail liner built in 1870, and originally operated by the Cunard Line on the Liverpool–New York route. She later served the Guion Line on the same route and the Canadian Pacific Line in the Pacific. In December 1891, Abyssinia was destroyed mid-Atlantic without loss of life by a fire that started in her cargo of cotton, further highlighting the danger in carrying both cotton and passengers on the same ship.
City of Paris was a British passenger liner operated by the Inman Line that established that a ship driven by a screw could match the speed of the paddlers on the Atlantic crossing. Built by Tod and Macgregor, she served the Inman Line until 1884 when she was converted to a cargo ship.
The Liverpool and Great Western Steamship Company, known commonly as the Guion Line, was a British passenger service that operated the Liverpool-Queenstown-New York route from 1866 to 1894. While incorporated in Great Britain, 52% of the company's capital was from the American firm, Williams and Guion of New York. Known primarily for transporting immigrants, in 1879 the line started commissioning Blue Riband record breakers to compete against Cunard, White Star and Inman for first class passengers. The financial troubles of one of the company's major partners in 1884 forced the firm to return its latest record breaker, the Oregon, to her builders and focus again on the immigrant trade. The company suspended sailings in 1894 because of new American restrictions on immigrant traffic.
The Fabre Line or Compagnie Française de Navigation à Vapeur Cyprien Fabre & Compagnie was a French shipping line formed in 1881 by Cyprien Fabre. It began operating a small fleet of sailing ships in 1865. Its ports of call included New York, NY; Providence, RI; Boston, MA; Ponta Delgada, Madeira, and Lisbon, Portugal; Piraeus and Salonica, Greece; Algiers, Algeria; Beirut, Lebanon; Naples and Palermo, Italy; Alexandria, Egypt; Jaffa and Haifa, Palestine; Constantinople, Turkey; Monaco; and Marseilles, France.
The SS City of Chester was a steamship built in 1875 that sank after a collision in a dense fog with SS Oceanic at the Golden Gate in San Francisco Bay on August 22, 1888. She was owned by the Oregon Railroad Co. and leased by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company.
The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is Canada's national museum of immigration. The museum occupies part of Pier 21, the former ocean liner terminal and immigration shed from 1928 to 1971. Pier 21 is Canada's last remaining ocean immigration shed. The facility is often compared to Ellis Island (1892–1954), in terms of its importance to mid-20th-century immigration to Canada an association it shares with 19th century immigration history at Grosse Isle, Quebec (1832–1932) and Partridge Island in Saint John, New Brunswick (1785–1941). The museum began as an independent institution run by the Pier 21 Society in 1999. It became a national museum run by the Canadian federal government in 2011.
The Steerage Act of 1819, also called the Manifest of Immigrants Act, was an Act passed by the United States federal government on March 2, 1819, effective January 1, 1820. Its full name is An Act regulating passenger ships and vessels. It was the first law in the United States regulating the conditions of transportation used by people arriving and departing by sea. In addition to regulating conditions in ships, the act also required ship captains to deliver and report a list of passengers with their demographic information to the district collector. The Act was passed near the end of the term of the fifteenth United States Congress and signed into law by then United States President James Monroe. The Act was augmented by many additional Acts starting 1847 and finally repealed and superseded by the Carriage of Passengers Act of 1855. At the time of passage of the Act, the United States had no laws restricting immigration. In fact, the first federal legislation regulating immigration, the Page Act of 1875, was over 50 years in the future.
The Carriage of Passengers Act of 1855 was an act passed by the United States federal government on March 3, 1855, replacing the previous Steerage Act of 1819 and a number of acts passed between 1847 and 1849 with new regulations on the conditions of sea transportation used by passenger ships landing in the United States. The law was passed by the 33rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce.
SS Tenyo Maru was a Japanese ocean-going passenger liner of the Toyo Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha completed in 1908 by the Mitsubishi Dockyard & Engine Works, Nagasaki, Japan. Its sister ships were SS Chiyo Maru and SS Shinyō Maru (1911). It had accommodation for 275 first-class, 54 second-class, and 800 steerage passengers, and could carry over 8,000 tons of cargo. The steerage class had an opium den for Chinese passengers. The ship had the following dimensions: length overall 575 ft., between perpendiculars 558 ft., breadth 63 ft., depth to shelter deck 46 ft. 6 in., to upper deck 38 ft. 6 in., gross tonnage 14,700 tons; displacement 21,500 tons at 31 ft. 8 in. draught.
SS Moltke was a German ocean liner built by Blohm & Voss for the Hamburg America Line. She was named after Helmuth von Moltke. Sister ship to the SS Blücher, she was launched in 1901, and sailed her maiden voyage in February the following year. According to the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, she "was built for the eastern service of the line, but on nearing completion her interior arrangements were adapted to the New York service at Hamburg." Her first commanding officer was Captain Christian Dempwolf.
Resche discusses this site and its link to genealogical research, especially immigration to the US with related documents, brochures, and articles. See pp. 677-678 for a summary of the materials used throughout his doctoral thesis.
Low-resolution images are free to use for non-commercial purposes.
Resche discusses how the White Star Line archives were largely destroyed or distributed amongst many collectors. Made documents from the steamship lines have been digitized.
...superb examples of many documents used by immigrants and the steamship lines.
Materials used included the GG Archives
Example of using Ellis Island materials for (K-12)
gjenvick.com: One of the largest collections of historical documents from the 1800s through 1954 with concentrations in Steamship and Ocean Liner documents and photographs, Passenger Lists, US Navy Archives and additional materials covering World Wars I and II, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Immigration documents from Ellis Island, Castle Garden and other Immigration Stations.
(Requires Premium Membership to view online)
Teacher and Student Resources and Evaluation of Resources - The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives: Two document evaluations covering Influence, Characteristics, Accessibility, and Overall Rating.
Spring 2017 Grade 7 English Language Arts Test – A next Generation Assessment, 2017
The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives [Kids/Teens/Mature Teens] Provides information and documents about steamships, including brochures, passenger lists, and immigration documents.
Gjenvick–Gjønvik Archives—A private historical archive, the website has extensive collections of ephemera—articles, photographs, and brochures—on "immigration, military, and ocean travel, as well as fashions and the epicurean lifestyle of past eras." Their mission is to preserve social and cultural history from the 1870s–1950s. For example, learn about housekeeping onboard a steamship in this article from 1899.
Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity, Northern Studies Monographs 4. Extensive use of immigrant images from this site.
Presentation included materials from this site – Fellowship of the Steerage (The Man at the Gate), the abolishment of steerage [third class] (The New 'Man at the Gate').
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Discussion of RMS Titanic Cargo, steerage passengers' accommodations, and US Immigration card based on materials from this site.
Discussion of the Jewish migration from Bremen and Hamburg to North America (routes and passenger lists).
Photographs of immigrants coming through Ellis Island with retouched images of the past placed into modern-day New York. A photographic study that utilized images from this site.
A valuable site for researching immigrants to Canada or those who settled in the US who later crossed the border.
Discussion of Immigrant Inspection Card.
A brief discussion of the immigration and emigration materials, especially steamship passage tickets/contracts that provide fare information.
Discussion of a steerage passage ticket and the expense in 1907 shown in current dollar equivalents (Inflation Calculator 2009). Note: Related footnote on p. 35.
Summary of US Immigration Laws.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Extensive discussion of steerage conditions.
Included materials from this site.
The STCA collection was used extensively throughout this article.
Camp Grant described from materials on US Army Cantonments during WWI (P. 419).
World War I brochure by William Brown Meloney of the same title used to illustrate how succinct the booklet was, and could that style be used today.
Women's, Teen's, and Children's Clothing Styles on Board the Steamships and While Travelling in Style and Comfort.
Large collection of books in a number of topical sections that provide an excellent reference for the researcher and genealogist.
A review of their many topical navigational links on the left gutter revealed some interesting topics – the WPA and Influenza Pandemic were from the era of steamships and ocean liners. The Bangor Punta Archives pertained to a defunct corporation circa 1964-1984 that had an interesting existence (2 US Supreme Court decisions), and as a conglomerate, owned some well-known companies such as Smith & Wesson, Piper Aircraft, Starcraft, and several powerboats and yacht/sailboat manufactures.
Discussion of Dr. Edward Jenner and his cowpox vaccination.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Mémoire présenté en vue de l'obtention du grade de Docteur de l'Université de Nantes sous le sceau de l'Université Bretagne Loire. Resche discusses the Famous Big Four Ocean Liner Brochure.