For descendants of emigrants from Northern Ireland, the best records are generally those deposited at the port of arrival rather than departure due to the fact that the authorities were more concerned with recording people entering a country rather than those leaving. The two main sources of emigration records are passenger lists and emigrant letters.

Links to online passenger lists of ships from Ireland can be found here.

Some emigrant letters can be found in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

Emigration Database

The Emigration Database is a computerised collection of primary source documents on Irish emigration to North America (USA & Canada) in the 18th  and 19th centuries. It contains a variety of original material including  emigrant letters, newspaper articles, shipping advertisements, passenger lists,  official government reports, family papers and extracts from books and periodicals. The project is on-going with documents being added on a regular  basis. It is a vital research resource for historians, teachers, students and genealogists with an interest in Irish-America.

The Database can be accessed in the Library of the Centre for Emigration Studies at the Ulster American Folk Park and in the Local Studies Departments of the Education and Library Boards in Armagh, Ballymena, Ballynahinch, Belfast, Enniskillen, Londonderry and Omagh.

Emigration to the USA

Emigration from Ireland is dominated by the mass exodus during the Great Famine when more than a million emigrated to North America. In Northern Ireland the effects of the famine were less dramatic than in the south and west of Ireland and the migrants were mainly Protestant and in particular Presbyterian.

Emigration to Canada

Many Ulster people emigrated to Canada and many also went to the USA via Canada as the journey was shorter and cheaper. The first large scale settlement of Upper Canada occurred when Loyalists, many of whom where Ulster Scots, fled the USA during the American War of Independence. A second wave came directly from Ulster, attracted by less competition for land compared with the eastern seaboard of the USA.

Emigration to Australia

Because of the distance involved and the logistics of the journey, Australian emigration tended to be a mass organised movement and did not develop in a major way until the 1820s. There were government-assisted schemes such as the emigration of workhouse inmates to Australia. Some Ulstermen travelled to the southern hemisphere as convicts but the transportation system was progressively withdrawn from 1840 onwards. The emigrants who arranged their own travel to Australia were generally better off than those who emigrated from Northern Ireland to North America. The costs of transportation were much higher and Australia attracted a larger proportion of emigrants who had the resources to set themselves up in business.

The National Archives of Ireland has an online database of transportation records for Irish emigrants to Australia between 1791 and 1868 based on details extracted from their records.

Emigration to Other Destinations

Much smaller numbers of emigrants left Northern Ireland for places such as South Africa and South America.