The all-American icons with British roots

Tom Cruise and Halle Berry are just two of the US celebrities whose families were living in Britain not so very long ago, research has revealed.

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The all-American icons?

It is now possible to discover just how they ended up on U.S shores through the most comprehensive online record of shipping voyages from the British Isles to America, covering more than 100 years.

Popular genealogy website ancestry.co.uk has unearthed the passenger lists from between 1820 and 1960.

During that time more than 100 million people travelled from their home country to the U.S, attracted by the chance to build a new life.

Some were immigrants, some holidaymakers, while others were on business or simply crew members.

Some 9.25 million British emigrants made the long, and often uncomfortable journey, across the Atlantic from British ports to American shores.

Among that number were many ambitious young men and women intent on finding fame and fortune.

And while they might not have found it for themselves, they forged a path for some of the nation's best-known celebrities.

Tom Cruise, for instance, is part Welsh. His full name Tom Cruise Mapother IV reveals a clue, for his paternal great-great grandfather was Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, in North Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850.

Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry has far more recent British roots.

Her maternal grandmother was just nine months old when she set sail from Liverpool with her mother and five siblings in 1912 on board the Merion.

The family eventually settled in Philadelphia and Halle Maria Berry was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1966.

The First Lady Laura Bush's great-great grandparents also made voyage from Britain the U.S, in 1865, as did the paternal great-great grandparents of Tom Hanks.

Some classic symbols of American industry such as the Buick, Campbell's Soups and US Steel, were created by Scots who travelled to far away shores to make their fortunes.

David Dunbar Buick was born in Arbroath, Angus in 1854, but left for Detroit, in Michigan at the age of two.

He founded the classic American car firm Buick Motor Company, which was formally incorporated on May 19, 1904.

Of course, it was not just the ancestors of the stars who made the journey by sea.

The lists reveal the touching tales of more ordinary passengers, such as 18-year-old William Smith, who met older woman Margaret Rankin, 21, on board The Standard as she sailed from Belfast to New York.

He fell in love and followed her to Brooklyn where they married in 1852.

Others couples were so enamoured they could not wait to reach shore and tied the knot on board.

People emigrated from all parts of the British Isles - many of them wanting to escape hunger, poverty and unemployment. The mass migration saw large stateside communities set up.

By 1860 so many Irish had arrived in New York that it became the largest Irish city in the world with more than 200,000 of its 800,000 residents Irish born.

Now for the first time the English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh US passenger records can be individually name searched to reveal date, departure port and destination of travel.

The records also detail age, nationality, occupation, accompanying family members, name of ship, purpose of travel and even who funded the voyage.

Ancestry.co.uk managing director Simon Harper said: "Without question, the millions of names in the Ancestry Passenger Lists represent brave and colourful individuals who played a significant role in shaping what has become modern America.

"The fact that one in five Americans alive today is a descendent of the English, Irish, Scots or Welsh is testament to the survival and success of many of these passengers."

Access to the Ancestry Passenger Lists will be free until November 30.