Record Details

Information Wanted

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Information Wanted
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UNJU3N
 
Creator Harris, Ruth-Ann
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description The data in this dataset was extracted from the Information Wanted online database. It represents a unique data archive based on the numerous advertisements from the Boston-based Pilot newspaper placed by immigrants (and others) looking for lost friends and relatives from 1831 to 1920. The richness of the data includes demographic data on a large number of Irish immigrants gleaned from the ads such as place of origin in Ireland, occupation, port of entrance in the U.S. and in some cases several migrations in the U.S. and around the world. The current scope of the archive, which represents over 41,000 records, reflects interesting and tumultuous times, such as the Great Irish Famine and the United States Civil War. The database includes records primarily from 1831 through 1869.

The author of the dataset, Ruth-Ann Harris, was a professor of history who served as head of the Irish Studies Department at Northeastern University before coming to Boston College as an adjunct professor of history in the Irish Studies Program. In 2005, Harris gave her database to Boston College, and the Office of Marketing and Communications developed the database and hosted it on the website, Information Wanted.

Distribution represents the date on which the CSV data was downloaded from the web database.
 
Subject Arts and Humanities
Irish Americans
Immigrants
Emigration and Immigration
History
Massachusetts
Boston
Sources
Personals
Genealogy
 
Language English
Irish
 
Contributor Williams, Kathleen
Williams, Kathleen
Mento, Barbara
Rowell, Chelcie
Ball, Rachel
Brody, Rachel
DeStefano, Courtney
Gross, Kate T.
Hardesty, Jared
Horgan, Kathleen
McEvoy, Gráinne
Twomey, Carolyn
 
Type Tabular data
 
Source The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in the Boston Pilot, Volumes 1–7 (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, 1989–1993), edited by Ruth-Ann M. Harris, Donald M. Jacobs, Dominique M. Pickett, and B. Emer O’Keeffe. The printed volumes above present exact transcriptions of advertisements originally placed in the Boston Pilot newspaper.