In 1909, two sisters from Lancashire stood at the US-Canada border, only to be told they were forbidden from entering. The reason? They were ‘Alien Contract Labourers’.
My recent family history project has taken me out of Lancashire and across the Atlantic to Canada, where my Taylor family relatives emigrated in the early 1900’s. Inevitably my research has included a dive into passenger list records and the unfamiliar territory of border crossing manifests. Namely, the St. Albans lists.
Whilst trawling through passenger records can be time consuming, it has proven invaluable for piecing together a picture of my family’s life and movements across the pond. This is my first go at researching an immigration story featuring my family besides Irish emigration during the famine years, and it has turned out to be far more interesting than I had ever imagined. Having spent so much time in these immigration record sets I decided to put together this blog on border crossing records before a further detailed narrative about my Taylor family’s emigration from Chorley to Canada. In this post I attempt to touch upon the various abbreviations I came across in my research and what the records in full revealed about my kin, in the hope that some of what is shared here may be of use to others.
People left England for Canada and the U.S looking for better living conditions and/or seeking new employment opportunities in the growing cities and industries. For many they sought to join other family members who had already made the journey. – Such was the case for other members of this Taylor family.
The main ports of entry into Canada included –
Halifax (Nova Scotia), Montreal, Quebec City (Quebec), St. John’s (Newfoundland), Toronto (Ontario), Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island), and Moncton (New Brunswick).
Records that cover immigrants who entered the United States
through Canada via border-crossings are known as the St. Albans Lists. – Rootsweb, Immigration Across The U.S. Canadian Border
“A central news dispatch says a number of Lancashire cotton workers are coming to America being offered good wages to work in mills here.” – The Wall Street Journal September 1901
Canada to the U.S.A via Steamship
My great aunts, Nannie & Helena Taylor made a plan to travel to the United States from Canada in the year 1909.
Arriving at the port their travel plans came to a halt when they were refused entry into the United States on the grounds of being identified as ‘alien contract labourers‘ (A.C.L).
DEBARRED
meaning: denied entry, not admitted.
So, what does this term mean, what happened after being refused and what does it tell us about our family members?
- The term contract labour was a system that referred to labour (aliens) imported from a foreign country under agreement to work for a particular employer.
Why were they stopped? Well, because by 1909 entry into the United States for this reason was prohibited by the Alien Contract Labour Law of 1885.
- The Alien Contract Labor Law, also known as the Foran Act prohibited any company or individual from bringing unskilled immigrants into the United States to work under contract. The fear was that unskilled workers would corrupt the labour market and lower the wages for the American citizens.
The terms of this law were often hard to enforce because contract workers were difficult to identify at ports of entry, but in this case the officer in charge of assessing the sister’s application must have had enough information to identify them as contract workers and thus they were refused.
The Pall Mall Gazatte 1891
What was the process that Nannie and Helena went through at the border?
Immigrants like Nannie and Helena would have gone through an immigration application process. First was a physical exam to rule out contagious disease, or mental incapacity. Next came a verbal examination. This included a round of questions, including but not limited too –
- Place of birth
- Occupation
- Total money in possession
- Planned destination in the United States
The immigration document used in this case was a Form 1 Class E, which tells us that the sisters inspection took place at a northern land border port of entry.
Class E may relate to a categorisation within a designated border port, or perhaps refers to steerage, or third-class passengers?
Similar to a ship’s passenger manifest, the form was titled “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers Applying for Admission to the United States from Foreign Contiguous Territory“. This border port manifest often relates to immigrants who had been in Canada for months or years and applied for admission to the United States at a land border port. Before October 1st, 1906, the records include only those immigrants born outside Canada. – By Way of Canada, Prologue Magazine By Marian L. Smith
Nannie and Helena had by 1909 been resident of Canada for approximately eight years.
Factory Workers
The sisters gave their occupations as cotton weavers. Their intended residence was with a “friend” named George Mont of Park Ave, Lockport NY. George was a loom fixer and lived in Lockport with his wife. Perhaps he was also employed at the factory where the sister’s intended employment.
Nannie and Helena declared that they were traveling with $150.00 each. This is a large sum of money considering what is known of the family’s financial status already. The sisters declared that they had paid their own passage.
Another common reason for refused entry into the United States was if border authorities believed that once in America the immigrant would be unable to take care of themselves, resulting in the government having to provide for them. The term for this refusal on border crossing records was L.P.C (likely public charge). To get around this, immigrants would find employment before getting to the United States. It is likely that Nannie and Helena had employment arranged beforehand and that George Mont was perhaps a contact related to their employment.
This appears to be confirmed by the critical question asked by the border official, which was –
“Whether coming by reason of any offer, solicitation, promise, or agreement, express or implied, to labour in the United States?”
Nannie and Helena answered, yes.
Of the seventy people named on the border crossing record, four in total including the Taylor sisters answered yes to this question; all were refused entry.
Put all these pieces together and we can see why they were identified as contract workers and sent back to Canada.
On further investigation of the Form 1, I noticed that my great aunts were the only passengers to state England (Bamber Bridge, Lancashire) as their last residence, everybody else gives a destination in Canada. This would imply that the sisters left Canada first for England and then quite soon after their return to Canada they set off for the United States. At the time of publishing this page I have had no luck finding the two sisters on any passenger lists to/from England surrounding the year 1909. Whether this is relevant or not I am unsure, but thought it worth noting.
A case of similar circumstances
Girl Spinners Detained
Cotton Factory Times 1907 – Public Domain
The new Immigration Law
American Register 1903 – Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Border Crossing
Border Crossing records as a whole contain so much information, so if you have relatives that you know travelled to Canada it is worthwhile searching the border crossing records to see if they travelled into the U.S or made an attempt too.
These records often contain details about:
- Name, Age, Birthplace
- Ethnicity/Nationality
- Arrival Date and Place
- Whether they had been in the U.S before with details of when and where
- The names of any persons accompanying them
- Name of nearest relative or friend in former country
- Intended place of residence and the name of the nearest family/friend at destination
- Occupation
- Physical Appearance
Once you have located your relative in one immigration record, the door swings open for further research opportunities from the information contained. I found the dates particularly useful for narrowing down my searches in other immigration record sets.
New York State
Later records in New York confirm the sisters did eventually make it to Lockport City. Helena worked at the world-famous Niagara Textile Company, once renowned for its towels and linens.
Nannie married in November of 1909 and travelled across the border with her new husband. She died a year later in 1911 and was buried at Glenwood Cemetery, Niagara Falls, New York.
Card Manifest
Nannie and Helena’s border crossing story isn’t the first time I have come across a family member being refused entry into the United States.
Thomas Taylor, the sisters brother experienced the same circumstances four years earlier. Thomas made his journey into the U.S from Canada with a friend. Both men were stopped and debarred under the same circumstances as Helena and Nannie.
Thomas too had better luck three years later according to the record below. Whilst the manifest is recording his journey in 1911, he is asked about any other times he has been in the U.S.
Port of Arrival – Niagara Falls, New York April 1911
Interesting fact – Laws passed in 1909 required each immigrant to have at least $20 before they were allowed to enter America.
The record above is a card manifest (548) and was used for each non-resident alien arrival into the United States. Thomas’s form is particularly interesting because he appears to have answered dishonestly.
The seaport landing is four years too early, and he hasn’t declared his previous failed attempt across the border. His declaration that he planned to reside with his father in 1911 raises even more questions as city directories and the previous years census state that his mother was a widow. The address he has given is correct as the Taylor residence in Lockport City, however.
This card record shows that Thomas is successfully admitted at the port of Niagara Falls on this occasion. Perhaps he held back the truth of his earlier attempt believing that it may hinder him entering the U.S again.
Tip – Check record pages either side of the passenger list containing your relative/s name. Sometimes two copies of the record are available and may reveal details that weren’t clear or visible on the first record. They may also contain additional details, or abbreviations that can help further your research.
Having a family tree that is predominantly rooted in local rural areas can make the topic of emigration quite exciting. A genealogical detour across the Atlantic even for a short period has been both refreshing and interesting. The results of my research have provided an insight into the immigration processes of the time, as well as a deeper look into the lives of lesser-known great aunts.
My Taylor family relatives left the U.S and returned to Canada in 1913. The following year just three months after the outbreak of WWl they left Canada for the last time, arriving in London in October 1914.
Links to other websites that I found useful during my research can be found below.
Sources and Further Reading
- Ancestry
- Find my past
- Familysearch.org
- Featured Image – Credit: Niagara River: a steam train travelling on a bridge over the river between Canada and the USA. Wood engraving, 1862. Wellcome Collection
- Archives.com
- Rootsweb
- Rutgers Libraries
- Newspapers.com
- British Newspaper Archive
- migrationmuseum.org
- https://www.thoughtco.com/us-passenger-list-annotations-and-markings-1422263
- https://www.startresearching.com/blog/passenger-lists-the-meaning-behind-the-notations-abbreviations-and-marks
- https://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/manifests/occ/
- https://sites.rootsweb.com/~flmgs/crumbs/Immigration_Across_US_Can_Border.pdf
- https://www.theshipslist.com/Research/canadarecords.shtml