Arrival Records Challenge: John & Josefa Casprsyck can you find them?

Question:I've been looking for any hint of a passenger list for my Polish ancestors for a few years now (trying Ancestry, Steven Morris' Search Engine, and Germans & Russian to America), but am hoping someone with fresh eyes might have a better chance. Homestead records say Jan 1873 arrival in NY - but no trace. Children: Frances, Mary, & Alex and possibly Elizabeth. Parents born abt 1846.
Other poss spellings of name Kaspersyck, Kasprzyk, and with a C.
They homesteaded in Grant Co, South Dakota. I have no record or sign of a residence before the Dakotas.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I've been looking for any hint of a passenger list for my Polish ancestors for a few years now (trying Ancestry, Steven Morris' Search Engine, and Germans & Russian to America), but am hoping someone with fresh eyes might have a better chance. Homestead records say Jan 1873 arrival in NY - but no trace. Children: Frances, Mary, & Alex and possibly Elizabeth. Parents born abt 1846.
Other poss spellings of name Kaspersyck, Kasprzyk, and with a C.
They homesteaded in Grant Co, South Dakota. I have no record or sign of a residence before the Dakotas.

Just because they said they came through NY doesn't mean they did. They may have arrived in Canada, or perhaps Detroit.

It is possible they did arrive in NY in Jan 1873 - but the writing was too messy to read, or was a victim to a typo on ancestry. Or perhaps their ship left Europe in Jan.

You should also check the children's names for similar Polish ones.

www.ancestry.com--Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934
Name: John Kasprzyk
Birth: abt 1874
Departure: 8 Mrz 1899 (8 Mar 1899) - Hamburg
Arrival: New York

(This is as close as I could come. I saw one for Josefa, but it had her birth year as something like 1918).

Sadly, you are probably 5 years ahead of technology in your search. The site that will eventually have the records is http://www.castlegarden.org

But, the transcription of records from the Port of New York pre-Ellis Island is a very long and tedious process. The Irish Potato Famine years took almost 3 years for them to transcribe. They continue working on the later years, but it's literally one film at a time out of the New York State and federal archives. The project is slowing down because many of the early volunteers have left and there aren't as many transcribers and proofreaders in place anymore.

My humble suggestion, as tedious as it is, would be to visit the nearest NARA center to wherever you live and pull the films from January 1873 and just start reading them for yourself. It's a very low tech solution, but it would tell you if the records do exist. You can find the nearest NARA center at: http://www.nara.gov