How police records can help trace Danish emigrants.
Emigration from Denmark was facilitated by the inauguration of steamship service to the United States, cutting the arduous voyage to 10 days. One source claims that a single ship, the Frederick VIII, transported more than half a million Danes and other Scandinavians to America. To protect people from being conned by unscrupulous emigration agents, the Copenhagen police were given oversight of all overseas tickets. They recorded everyone emigrating from Denmark—not just from Copenhagen—from 1869 to 1940. . Complete information from each emigrant’s ticket was copied down in what grew to be 90 thick volumes, including name, last residence, age, year of emigration, and initial destination abroad.
Although the Family History Library has microfilm of Danish emigration records up to 1911, the easiest way to search them is the Danish Demographic Database, a free site that also has collections of census and probate records. When you click through to the emigration records, make sure to select “English” in the dropdown list of languages at the upper right of the page. The database lets you search 217,000 Danish and 150,000 foreign, mainly Swedish, emigrants from the years 1869 to 1908. You can search on any combination of these criteria:
- Name (surname, first name )
- Position (occupation)
- Age (at sailing)
- Last residence
- Parish
- County
- Destination (city )
- State
- Country
- Contract Number
- Presentation date (roughly corresponds to departure date, entered as month number, year—9, 1892=September 1892)
Start by filling out only a few fields, then add filters if you get too many hits. You can even search just by first name by entering a comma, then the name (“, Jens”).
The information you’ll find—in transcribed form, not images—varies slightly depending on the year of emigration, with later years collecting more data.