Heading to America: passengers of the Hamburg-São Francisco del Sul route in the second half of the 19th century.

Abstract The purpose of this text is to critically present a set of documents related to immigration. The lists of passengers who boarded in Hamburg and landed in São Francisco do Sul, Santa Catarina, between the years 1851 and 1889, translated to Portuguese, whose original documents are part of the Historical Archive of Joinville, SC. Basically, the contents of these sources include the “factsheets” concerning each vessel and each trip, the passengers’ names (including names of family members and other accompanying persons), age, profession, place of origin (usually place of birth), marital status (when applicable), religion, and various observations noted by translators.