Ellis Island and the Immigrant Experience

Tim McNeese

Description

Located not far from the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island played a major role in American history. More than 16 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. This curriculum-based eBook discusses Ellis Island and what it was like to be an immigrant in America during the period in which it was open. Bolstered by extensive photographs and a chronology, Ellis Island and the Immigrant Experience is ideal for students writing reports.

Sujets

• 20th Century
• Histoire
• Isla Ellis
• América
• History of the United States
• American
• United States
• Global
• History
• Ellis Island

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438195667
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Ellis Island and the Immigrant Experience
Copyright © 2019 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
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ISBN 978-1-4381-9566-7
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Contents Chapters Introduction: First Arrival at Ellis Island Immigrants to the Colonies Early Waves of Immigrants The New York Funnel A New Federal Immigration System The Immigrant Experience at Ellis Island The End of an Era Support Materials Chronology Further Reading Bibliography About the Author
Chapters
Introduction: First Arrival at Ellis Island
The barge John E. Moore slipped across the waters of New York Harbor from a dock located over at the Battery, its deck decorated for the occasion. Onboard were the subjects of this special day in the history of American immigration. It was New Year's Day, 1892. The day marked the opening of the country's first federally operated immigration processing center, located on Ellis Island and situated nearly in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. For almost a century, the United States had not established a system to process foreign arrivals from around the world for admission into their adopted country. Instead, states such as New York created their own systems, which operated with limited efficiency. Such systems were often corrupt and controlled by one political party or another. But as the numbers of immigrants to the United States grew from thousands to hundreds of thousands each year, it became clear that a new system, a real system of immigrant processing was needed. Ellis Island became the shining new hope for that system.

Ellis Island , in Southern Manhattan, was the entry point for more than 12 million American immigirants between 1892 and 1954. In the first year of operation alone 446,000 immigrants came through the island terminal. During World War II it was a training site for the U.S. Coast Guard and was also used to house enemy merchant detainees.
Today Ellis Island is preserved as an immigration museum
Source: Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division. Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection.
Since most immigrants from Europe entered the United States by ships arriving in New York Harbor, it was the natural choice for a new federal facility. The previous state-operated depot, Castle Garden, had served as the primary funnel point for immigrants for four decades, beginning in 1854. Situated on the southeast edge of Manhattan's Battery, on grounds that had served as a military installation in earlier years, Castle Garden had become notorious for corruption. Con artists and shysters waited outside its doors, ready to pounce on newly processed immigrants, those who innocently allowed themselves to be cheated out of their money by offers of overpriced railroad tickets and inferior lodgings in seedy New York boardinghouses. It was a system built on graft, inefficiency, and politics. And with each passing decade, increasing numbers of immigrants had placed a strain on the Castle Garden facilities and its personnel until the system reached a breaking point. For the future, the problems of immigrant processing would lie in the hands of the federal government.
Perhaps ironically, despite a specially decorated barge delivering the first immigrant arrivals that day to Ellis Island, there was little fanfare, no formal opening. Those who first reached the island on the John E. Moore barge had sailed to America from a dozen points dotting the European landscape. They crossed the Atlantic onboard the Guion Line steamship Nevada , which had embarked from the Irish port of Queenstown. It was there that seven Irish immigrants—including a 17-year-old girl named Annie Moore 1 from County Cork and her two younger brothers, 11-year-old Anthony and 7-year-old Phillip—had taken passage in late December of 1891. (The Moore children were making the trip to America to join their parents who had arrived on an earlier voyage.) When they came onboard, they joined 117 other immigrant passengers who had boarded at Liverpool, England. From there, the Nevada began its Atlantic voyage, headed for New York.
Young Annie Moore and her siblings took berths in the ship's steerage section, where the poorest passengers were placed. Among the 124 passengers, 20 had paid for first and second class tickets which provided better cabin accommodations. Half of those passengers were American citizens returning to the United States. Those in steerage presented a multi-ethnic mix of European blood. Approximately one out of every three passengers on the Nevada came from northern European countries, including 12 English, seven Irish (including the Moore family), two Germans, two from France, and 14 from Sweden. But many of those living in steerage were from Eastern Europe. They were Russian Jews who were political refugees, those fleeing the harsh dictates of the czar—men, women, and children, 77 in all, seeking new lives of freedom and opportunity in America.
Once they completed their shared experience of passage onboard a ship bound for the United States, these Russian Jews would fan out in every direction, searching for their place in America. They brought skills with them to the New World as farmers, machinists, tailors, tinsmiths, and bookmakers. They were young for the most part, with many in their 20s and 30s. The oldest was a 50-year-old Russian tailor, and the youngest, Sara Abramowitz, was only four months. They would settle in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Minnesota. Some even settled as far west as Wyoming. While each immigrant onboard the Nevada represented a unique immigrant story, they were all headed for New York, even if not all would make their way to Ellis Island.
Even with the opening of Ellis Island as a federal immigration depot, the system did not treat all new arrivals the same. Those passengers on the Nevada who had paid for better accommodations in first and second class, the privileged 20, would be allowed to enter the United States directly, without any processing. The immigration system placed no demands on such immigrants—of course, 10 of the 20 were already Americans—treating them with deference. Such passengers were listed on the Nevada's manifest as "gentlemen" and "ladies," while passengers in steerage were listed by their occupations. Even the new federal system filtered new arrivals unfairly and with prejudice.
When the Nevada reached New York Harbor, she did not proceed straight to Ellis Island. The waters around the island were too shallow for larger ships, which forced such vessels to tie up on the Manhattan mainland and then have their immigrant passengers unloaded, only to board smaller ferry barges, like the John E. Moore , which would deliver them directly.
On the first day that Ellis Island's immigration depot opened for business, three ships—the Nevada, the City of Paris , and the Victoria —delivered a total of 700 steerage passengers to Ellis by barge, representing even more European points of origin. Of the Victoria's 313 steerage passengers, all but two were from Southern Italy.
As the John E. Moore crossed the waters from Manhattan to the island, it was met by a cacophony of fog horns and whistles from the island's pier. Disembarking from their barges, these 700 new arrivals to Ellis Island's new facilities were facing uncertain futures. What would America become for them? What opportunities would they find there? Where would their journey finally end? Were the stories they had heard of the United States true? Were America's streets really paved with gold? As they approached the depot, so many questions must have swirled through their minds.
For the teenaged girl from County Cork, Ireland, it would be a day like no other. It is unclear today why Annie Moore was selected as the first immigrant to enter the processing station at Ellis Island. But her first day in America began with gold. As she walked across the gangplank from the barge to the island, she tripped in excitement. She received a cursory examination from federal inspectors and was then placed before Charles M. Hanley, the private secretary of the late U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, William Windom [1827–1891], who had passed away the previous year. Hanley wrote her name down in the island's entry books, the first of many such volumes in which millions of immigrant names would be recorded over the following decades. Nearby stood the commissioner of Ellis Island, Colonel John Weber [1890–93], who handed the young, excited girl a special gift—a $10 gold piece.
Surprised, Annie responded: "Is this for me to keep, sir?" 2 She was assured it was hers to keep, and Annie, embarrassed, told Weber the coin represented more money than she had ever held in her life, as she promised to keep it as a memento of the day she entered the United States as the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island. Soon, she was whisked into the facility's visitor waiting room, where she and her brothers were reunited with their happy parents. From the time Annie Moore tripped on the barge gangplank to the moment she and her parents left the island for New York City, only 30 minutes had passed. But for Annie Moore, her life in America awaited her.
1. Some reports at the time suggested that Annie was younger, between 13 and 15. Newspapers even reported that January 1 was her birthday. It was actually in May. https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/annie-moore-nytimes .
2. Eithne Loughrey, Annie Moore: First in Line for America (Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1999), 42.
Immigrants to the Colonies
Thousands of years ago, the first human immi