For many years I've searched (unsuccessfully) for an immigration ship manifest for my grandfather Antonio Agazio. I think my search is finally over. The family story was he left Italy as a young teenager; arrived in Canada in the early 1900s; worked his way across the country; and finally entered the United States. As you can see, the family story did not contain many details I could work with. I was beginning to think I would never actually see a ship manifest with my grandfather's name on it.
About three or four years ago I stumbled upon a my grandfather's Declaration of Intention to become a citizen on the Washington State Digital Archives site that gave me information I've never seen before. From this document I learned that he left his home town of San Giovanni in Fiore, Italy and arrived in France (I don't know the location in France or how he got there, but I assume it was by ship). He then travelled by steam ship to Liverpool, England and from there, on the ship Lake Michigan to Quebec, Canada. From Quebec, he somehow travelled across Canada and crossed into the United States at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan on 19 June 1901. Despite having a date, ship name, and port of entry I could not find an immigration ship manifest - until today.
This morning I was fooling around with the Canadian Passenger Lists on Ancestry.com and decided to only use my grandfather's year of birth (1885) and the year of arrival (1901) from the Declaration of Intention as search criteria. The search results popped up and four entries down I found a guy named Antonio Agarn who was born in about 1885 and arrived at the port of Quebec on 7 June 1901 from Liverpool on the ship Lake Megantic. Since four of the six criteria match what my grandfather wrote in his Declaration of Intention, I decided to check this guy out.
When I looked at the name on the manifest I could clearly see the "Aga" and the "io," but the "z" kind of looks like an "r". Since all of the other information fits to include his age (16), I am declaring that this manifest documents my grandfather's arrival in North America.
For all of these years I failed to find my grandfather because of a transcription error. This is not the first time this has happened and I'm sure it won't be the last.
