John Camden Hotten first published The Original Lists of Persons of Quality – his compilation of documents relating to seventeenth-century migration to New England, the Chesapeake, and the Caribbean – more than a century and a quarter ago, and it remains one of our most valuable and accurate sources for that period. He included in the volume the surviving records from the London Port Books, along with lists from some of the English outports. In addition, he included some muster rolls from Virginia, and other items listing early settlers there.
Agents of the crown at London and at the lesser English ports maintained registers of those passengers boarding ships for ports outside England. These were not like the passenger manifests of the nineteenth century. In the 1630s they were, rather, attempts by the English authorities to ascertain that those departing were loyal to the crown, and were not departing without paying any of the national taxes that had been assessed on them. (In these years Charles I was ruling without Parliament, and had to employ extraordinary means to collect revenue.)
For example, the London port book for 1635 provides extensive information on those passengers boarding vessels bound for the New World. The port book was originally compiled in chronological order, and that order has been maintained by Hotten. All those boarding a given ship on a given day are grouped together with ages and, in some cases, occupations also provided. Passengers are sometimes listed in family groups, and sometimes not. Passengers for each ship arrived over a period of many days or even weeks, so a complete passenger list for each ship must be compiled by gathering together the shorter lists entered day-by-day.
These records published by Hotten have been one of the most important sources utilized in the compilation of the published volumes of the Great Migration Study Project. In the course of more than two decades of research on that project, there have been frequent opportunities to check Hotten’s reading of these records against the original, with the result that the version published by Hotten has always been deemed to be accurate.
Despite the passage of more than a century, and despite the publication of several more versions of some of these records in the intervening years, this volume by Hotten remains the best source for seventeenth-century passenger records, and should be preferred to all others.
Adapted from the foreword to the new NEHGS edition of John Camden Hotten’s Original Lists of Persons of Quality.
If anyone has this book I’d be interested in knowing what it might contain pertaining to John Skinner, member of Rev. Thomas Hooker’s company and Founder & Proprietor of Hartford, CT.
Ric,
Have you checked the area libraries? Are you in the area? The Connecticut local libraries often have excellent Genealogy sections and The Connecticut Historical Society has a great library as well. There is also a genealogy library in Simsbury.
You can get it free on googlebooks, but there is no index. https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=VN_A5wlsjQQC&pg=GBS.PR27
Where can one see the originals or quality images of a particular London port list? Specifically, I would like to view the lists for the May 1635 sailing of the Elizabeth & Anne.
The book is on-line through archive.org.
https://archive.org/stream/originallistsofp00hottuoft#page/n5/mode/2up
Thanks. I’ve downloaded it and added it to my library. While I found the Susan & Ellen (Ellin?) listed I did not find John Skinner. Perhaps he was not considered a “person of quality”.
I used to wonder the same thing. Then I learned that the full name of the book is “The original lists of persons of quality; emigrants; religious exiles; political rebels; serving men sold for a term of years; apprentices; children stolen; maidens pressed; and others who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700 : with their ages and the names of the ships in which they embarked, and other interesting particulars; from mss. preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, England”.
Sort of covers it all, doesn’t it? No wonder it gets abbreviated.
I look forward to adding a copy of this invaluable work to my library – thank-you Mr. Anderson!
J. Record
Interesting! Does a source like this exist for those leaving England in the 1790s? Thanks for the new blog!
Mr. Anderson, somewhat “off topic” – but can you tell me if there are any books, or series threreof, that you might recommend regarding Mid-Atlantic families, or sketches akin to your Great Migration series? I am curious for the sake of my own too often disregarded ancestors of the Old Domnion and adjacent states?
J. Record
Why will no one take the time to look again at the 1635 Port Lists?? I think some names may have been misread.
James Savage published his reading in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 3rd series, vol 8 (1843) and vol 10 (1849).
Samuel G. Drake published his as Founders of New England in NEHGR vol 14 (1860) beginning on p. 300.
John Camden Hotten published his as discussed above in 1874 (first ed.).
Peter Wilson Coldham published his as The Complete Book of Emigrants in 1987.
I believe (but could be wrong) that each of these four men went over to England and transcribed from the originals.