Information Wanted

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.