On June 2, 1892, Annie Moore, a fifteen-year-old girl from County Cork, Ireland, stepped off the crowded ship she had been on for three weeks and became the first of the more than twelve million immigrants to the United States, most of them from Europe, who entered the United States through the doors of Ellis Island, a federal immigration station between 1892 and 1924.

Today you and your family can visit Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor close to Liberty Island, the home of the Statue of Liberty, by taking a ferry either from Battery Park in lower Manhattan, or from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. If you go – and if you can, I recommend that you do – plan to spend the day. Ellis Island’s stories and the ghosts of those whose dreams began – or ended – there are worth at least two or three hours.   

Indeed, perhaps your family can trace its own roots back to Ellis Island. (You can check the database there in person or at http://www.ellisislandrecords.org).

Not all immigrants to New York came through here. Most who did were third class, or “steerage,” passengers. (Those with more money were processed on board their ships unless they were sick, or their papers were not in order.)

At Ellis Island immigrants were inspected to ensure that they were healthy (there was a hospital on the island for those who were not,) they were mentally sound and literate (immigration inspectors there spoke most European languages) and that they had jobs waiting for them in the United States, or the skills necessary to find employment.They were asked questions about their background, their political feelings, and their reasons for wishing to immigrate, in an attempt to eliminate anyone who was lying about a criminal or radical political background who could become a problem in his or her new country. Immigrants also had to show they had enough money to get to whatever their destination was, and letters from prospective employers or relatives already in the United States, proving that they would quickly be able to put down roots, and would not become wards of their new country.

Thousands of people, from dozens of countries, were processed each day, making Ellis Island a crowded, noisy, smelly, place, since most of the immigrants had been crowded in the holds of unsanitary ships for two or more weeks. Family members were sometimes separated from each other in the confusion, as they were sent to have different examinations, and the cacophony of different languages and dialects was intimidating and frightening for many. Through it all was the fear of not passing the examinations; of not being allowed to enter to the United States.
Dormitories at Ellis Island held those who could not be processed the same day they arrived, or who were held for further testing, or were waiting because a member of their family was hospitalized, and the family was waiting until they could be reunited so they could enter the United States together. These temporary residents of Ellis Island were fed, and clothed, and even introduced to American holidays.

After all of this, only two per cent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were sent back to their original countries; most of them because they had contagious diseases, or because it was thought they could not support themselves in the United States.
Today the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island welcomes almost 2 million visitors annually, who can retrace the steps of those millions of immigrants – perhaps their own ancestors – who first stepped on American soil on this small island.

An island of dreams.

 

Back to Top