Ellis Island,
founded in 1832, was established by the Federal Immigration Act of 1890 as a
screening center for the large number of Europeans who were immigrating to this
country. From the years 1820 to 1920, 70 percent of the country’s immigrants came into the United States through New York port. Immigration reached record levels of 1,004,756
in 1907. Until the latter part of the 1820’s, the
number of immigrants coming to America
was less than 10,000 per year. From 1820 on the number began to increase
especially in the 1840’s and 1850’s when bad harvests in Great Britain and northern Europe
forced many to move. Over 3.5 million came during the years 1845
to 1860. In The Uprooted The Epic Story of the Great Immigration that Made the
American People, renowned American immigration scholar, Oscar Handlin,
notes that many of the immigrants were peasants coming from agricultural
societies who faced many chances and many new challenges in the New World. The Pulitzer Prize winning author tells a grim
story of the immigrants’ crossings to America – some taking as long as 40 days,
and of the harsh conditions and difficulties greeting them here.
Today, what was once the Great Hall or
Registry Room at Ellis Island is the Ellis Island Immigrant Museum.
Outside, the American Wall of Honor lists the name of those who entered
here. The island was named after Samuel
Ellis, a butcher, who owned it during the Revolutionary War. American Indians named the island Kioshk or Gull Island
after the birds that inhabited it. The
Dutch called it “Little Oyster Island”
because of the oysters found there. (In early New Amsterdam, young Dutch gentlemen would row their young lady friends over to Oyster Island for picnics.) Ellis Island was a place of hope for those who were
allowed to enter the country but also a place of rejection and despair for those
turned away. Approximately one out of
every hundred were refused admission to the country
(some of them actually committed suicide here).
New York City was indeed “The Promised
City” as Moses Rischin suggests in
his study of the history of the Lower East Side. Many of these immigrants would settle in the
Lower East Side of Manhattan. A living
example of how they lived can be experienced at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum on Orchard Street. The first person to enter the country through
Ellis Island was Annie Moore from Ireland who was thought to have
gone West. However, it was recently discovered
that Ms. Moore actually settled on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, married a bakery clerk and had 11
children. When Oscar Wilde visited New York City in 1882, at customs he
announced: “I have nothing to declare
but my genius.” (The bridge - barely visible in the far distance
on the right - is the Manhattan
Bridge.)
Immigration for European countries was so great that by 1890, there were more Germans living in New York City than in Hamburg, Germany, more Irish here than in Dublin, more Jews than in Warsaw and more foreign-born persons living here than in any other city in the world. Today's New York City's immigrant population is composed largely of Puerto Ricans, Italians, Dominicans, West Indians and Chinese. The most recent reports show an increase of immigrants who are Russian, Korean, Chinese or Muslim (from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh).
