Manifest Destiny, Reconsidered: How Digitized Ship Records and DNA Evidence Are Correcting a Century of Immigration Mythology
For generations, American families have passed down stories of how their ancestors arrived on these shores — names, dates, and ports of entry repeated at dinner tables until they hardened into fact. Now, a convergence of newly digitized passenger manifests and consumer DNA testing is exposing how frequently those cherished narratives diverge from the documentary record, revealing not personal fabrications but systemic failures in how this nation recorded the people who built it.