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1790 - Congress passed the first naturalization law, granting citizenship to "free, white persons of good moral character" after residence in a state for one year and in the United States for two years (raised to five years in 1802).
1802 - Congress allowed "any court of record" to grant citizenship, starting the proliferation of 5000 naturalization courts with widely varied practices, until the federal Basic Naturalization Act of 1906.
1815 - a third wave of immigration began with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, with 9 million arriving in the U.S. by 1875, including 3 million from Ireland, 2.5 million from Germany, 1.5 million from Britain.
1819 - The Steerage Act of March 2, 1819 (3 Stat. 489) required the captain or master of a vessel arriving at a port in the United States or any of its territories from a foreign country to submit a list of passengers to the collector of customs, beginning January 1, 1820. The act also required that the collector submit a quarterly report or abstract, consisting of copies of these passenger lists, to the Secretary of State, who was required to submit such information at each session of Congress. After 1874, collectors forwarded only statistical reports to the Treasury Department. The lists themselves were retained by the collector of customs. Customs records were maintained primarily for statistical purposes. (text from NARA Immigration Records)
1819 - SS Savannah was built at the Speedwell Ironworks of Stephen Vail in New Jersey in 1818, left New York on May 22 of 1819 and reached Liverpool in 29 days, was the 1st steamship to cross from New York to Liverpool.
1833 - Mar. 22 Maryland passed a state Passenger Act, effective from September 1833 until October 1866, that required the masters of vessels to submit lists of passengers arriving at Baltimore to the mayor of that city. The law required that these "city lists'' report the age and occupation of the passengers, and that the lists be sworn to by the master of the vessel in the presence of the mayor. It also required a fee of $1.50 per immigrant passenger collected by the master of each ship.
1840 - July 4 the steamship Britannica, built by Canadian Samuel Cunard sailed from Liverpool to Boston and inaugurated regular transatlantic steamship passenger service. He was followed by the rival steamship lines of White Star Line in 1845, the Collins Line in 1847, Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1855, and Thomas Henry Ismay's Oceanic Steam Navigation Company in 1869 (Cunard would build the Lusitania in 1907 with new steam turbine engines and Ismay would follow with the Titanic in 1912).
1855 - Feb. 10 Congress passed a naturalization act for immigrant women.
1855 - Aug. 1 Castle Garden became official entry point for steamship lines bringing passengers from Europe to New York; immigrants were required to bathe with soap.
1866 - Castle Garden described in newspaper account in the New York Times Marine Intelligence Column, December 23, 1866
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