My great-grandmother was born in Puerto Rico but died in New York. Where do I start?

Start in Puerto Rico. Find the last Puerto Rican civil or church record that mentions her before she left — a birth record, a sibling's baptism, or a marriage record. That document anchors her identity and gives you names, dates, and places to match against mainland records. Then search U.S. federal census records for her in New York, beginning with the census year closest to when she likely arrived.

Why can't I find my Puerto Rican ancestor in the U.S. census?

Birthplace was recorded as 'Porto Rico' (not Puerto Rico) in the 1910 and 1920 censuses, and indexers sometimes missed this spelling variation or transcribed it differently. Try searching both spellings. Also try searching by household members you know — if you find a child's entry, the parents will be listed in the same household. Some researchers also had their surname Americanized in census records, so try variant spellings.

Did Puerto Ricans need to naturalize when they moved to the mainland?

No. Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens under the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. When they moved to the mainland, they were already citizens. Searching for naturalization records for a Puerto Rican migrant who moved after 1917 will not produce results — this is a common research error. If your ancestor moved before 1917, the situation is more complex; contact the course author for guidance on pre-1917 cases.

What is a Social Security SS-5 form and why is it valuable for migration research?

The SS-5 is the original Social Security card application, required beginning in 1935. It contains the applicant's full name, date and place of birth, father's full name, mother's full maiden name, and — critically — the address at time of application and the employer's name and address. If a Puerto Rico-born person listed a mainland city on their SS-5, that application date is strong evidence of when they migrated. These are available through FOIA request to the Social Security Administration for deceased individuals, and some are indexed on Ancestry.

My ancestor went to Hawaii in the early 1900s, not the mainland. Are those records different?

Yes, significantly different. The Puerto Rican migration to Hawaii was a distinct labor recruitment event that began in 1900, when approximately 5,000 Puerto Ricans were brought to work on sugar plantations following Hurricane San Ciriaco (1899). Records for this community are held by the Hawaii State Archives, the University of Hawaii's plantation collections, and the Hawaii Department of Health. Module 4 of this course covers Hawaii-specific records and repositories.

How do I handle a name that changed completely between Puerto Rico and the mainland?

Name variation is one of the central challenges in bi-jurisdictional Puerto Rican research. The key is to establish identity through elements other than the name first: birth year and place, parents' names, siblings listed in records, employers, neighbors. Once you have confirmed that two records refer to the same person through these non-name elements, you can document the name variation and explain it in your research conclusion. Module 5 covers this process as a framework you can apply to any case.

Migration Patterns and Mainland Records

A five-module intermediate course on tracing Puerto Rican ancestors who migrated to the United States mainland and Hawaii: departure records, federal and state records, key destination cities, and GPS-compliant bi-jurisdictional research.

Intermediate

Who Is This Course For?

This course is for intermediate researchers who have a Puerto Rican ancestor who migrated to the United States mainland or Hawaii and need to trace that person across two different record systems.

You may be:

A descendant of the Puerto Rican diaspora who was raised on the mainland and wants to connect your family’s U.S. history to its island origins
A researcher who has exhausted Puerto Rico records for an ancestor and suspects they migrated
Someone working through the Census Records course who reached Module 7 and wants to go deeper on mainland records

Prerequisite knowledge: This course assumes you can navigate FamilySearch’s Puerto Rico Civil Registration and Catholic Church Records collections, and that you understand how Puerto Rican double surnames work. If you need that foundation, start with Navigating Civil Records first.

What You Will Learn

Module	Topic
Module 1	Understanding Puerto Rican Migration Waves
Module 2	Puerto Rico Records That Document Departure
Module 3	U.S. Federal Records for Puerto Rican Migrants
Module 4	State and City Records in Key Destinations
Module 5	Building a Bi-Jurisdictional Research Plan

A Note on the Census Records Connection

The Census Records course, Module 7, introduces migration analysis using census records. This course picks up where Module 7 leaves off. Rather than repeating that foundation, we go deeper: what records document the departure from Puerto Rico, what mainland repositories hold records for each major destination city, and how to write a GPS-compliant conclusion that integrates evidence from both jurisdictions.

If you have not yet worked through Census Records Module 7, read it first — it covers concepts this course builds on.

Course Standards

All research strategies in this course follow the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) developed by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Evidence is classified using the Three-Layer Framework: source type (original, derivative, or authored), information quality (primary, secondary, or indeterminate), and evidence value (direct, indirect, or negative).

If you are new to GPS, the Research Standards: GPS guide provides a full introduction.

Start the course: Module 1 →

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