Florida Immigration
This entry was originally written by the Florida Pioneer Descendants Certification Program Committee of the Florida State Genealogical Society, Inc. for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
Florida immigration records, as such, are rare. Most of the early settlers came overland from the neighboring states to the north but below the Mason-Dixon Line, and the majority of them were from Georgia; however, see Frank M. Hawes, 'New Englanders in the Florida Census of 1850,' New England Historical and Genealogical Register 76 (1922): 44-54. There were some seaports through which immigrants came into the territory and state, but most of the recorded activity was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Known passenger ship records have been microfilmed by NARA. For a complete listing of microfilm available for research from the National Archives, see pages 11-12.
Ancestry.com has an index of Florida Passenger Lists, 1898-1951.
