TheGenealogist.co.uk has just released five million Emigration BT27 records as part of its growing immigration and emigration record set.

Uniquely, TheGenealogist allows you to track transmigration of people across countries routing through British ports on their way to America. TheGenealogist is also the only website with the facility to discover families travelling together on the same voyage using its SmartSearch technology.

The new records contain the historical records of passengers who departed by sea from Britain in the years between 1896 and 1909. They significantly boost the already strong immigration, emigration, naturalisation and passenger list resources at the site.

TheGenealogist has further revealed that these records will be shortly followed by the release of many more unique migration records.

The searchable records just released allow researchers find people using British shipping lines and travelling to places such as America, Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia in the passenger lists of people leaving from, or passing through, the United Kingdom by sea. The original records were kept by the Board of Trade’s Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors.

The Homestead Act of 1862 in America gave free land to settlers who developed it for at least five years, and became a particular magnet for Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes, who arrived in their millions.

To reach America, it was necessary to travel initially to England in order to then board one of the large transatlantic passenger ships. This preliminary journey has been recorded for many transmigrant passengers within The National Archives’ BT27 series of records. For the first time these can be easily found at TheGenealogist using the unique transmigration button.

The site’s powerful SmartSearch system also identifies potential family members travelling together. When the system recognises groups of people on the same voyage as a potential family, it displays a family icon. This then allows you to easily view the family.

All of these records are fully indexed records, enabling family historians to search by name, port of embarkation, port of destination, country of departure, country arrival and nationality.

Anyone with ancestors who travelled out of Britain will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist which reveal the details of the coming and going of migrant ancestors.

Nigel Bayley, managing director of TheGenealogist, said: We intend to make researching migrating ancestors easier with our new smarter interfaces and adding more records covering a growing range of countries.