James Scahill - Missing Friends 1831 To 1920

Extracted from a page on the website of New England Historical Society:

Beginning in 1831 and over the course of the next eighty-five years, the nationally distributed, Boston Pilot newspaper printed some 45,000 �Missing Friends� advertisements placed by friends and relatives. No one knows how many of these families found each other as a result of the ads, but these nineteenth-century notices continue to help families today find their ancestors.

These advertisements typically referred to the exact place of origin of the seeker and/or the sought. Many of the ads also describe the process and route of immigration, and even the name of the passenger ship. Many advertisements refer to women, for whom determining exact origin is even more difficult, due to the lack of naturalization records. So the Missing Friends advertisements help fill a great gap in nineteenth-century records for a mobile, impoverished, immigrant population.

Date: 9 November 1850

Name: James Scahill

Record: Of JAMES SCAHILL, of County Mayo, who left home about 2 years since; when last heard from was in Painesville, Ohio. This is to inform him that his sister, Mary, and John Moran, are in this city, and can be heard of by addressing Edward Ryan, Agent of the Irish Emigrant Society, No. 4 Congress Square, Boston, Ms.

Published Volume: Vol I, 1831 to 1850

Allan Scahill