2023 Parked at Home | #2: Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration
On Thursday, March 9 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the second session of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park. This webinar was presented by park rangers Allison Horrocks of BRVNHP and Lauren D’Elia of Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, part of Statue of Liberty National Monument.
Horrocks began with an introduction to Ellis Island, describing as an “Island of Hope and Island of Tears” for immigrants coming to the United States. Prior to the opening of Ellis Island, immigrants experienced very different circumstances. English immigrant Samuel Slater, who built the first industrial textile mill in Pawtucket, RI, arrived in the winter of 1789 as a twenty-one year old who could not afford to pay the tax on his trunk. He did not have to pass through a checkpoint, as was the experience of later immigrants. “Slater’s experiment” was a turning point in the young United States, during the country into an industrial power.
Nearly a hundred years after Slater’s arrival, two events demonstrated the changes that high levels of immigration brought to the United States. On May 4, 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago, IL, a peaceful labor demonstration led by immigrants asking for an eight-hour workday turned into the violent Haymarket Affair. Police attempted to disrupt the protests, and a bomb blast caused the death of multiple protesters, known as the Haymarket Martyrs, along with several police. In contrast to this violence, the Statue of Liberty was given as a gift from France in October 1886. These contrasting events within a short timeframe greatly shaped the next period of immigration.
D’Elia picked up the narration by describing Statue of Liberty National Monument as “Two Islands, One Park in New York Harbor”. She described how immigrants came to America for the opportunity to have financial success. From 1892 and 1924, their journeys began when they bought a ticket and filled out a form at the shipping company in their native country. If immigrants wanted to change their name, this is where it happened, not at Ellis Island. A trip across the Atlantic took about ten days, and passengers in steerage were quarantined for an additional ten days.
New York health officials checked passengers for infections diseases like measles or trachoma, a contagious disease causing bumps underneath the eyelids and eventually blindness. Wealthier passengers with first or second class tickets could skip the quarantine process and see health officials in their own rooms. Once past medical inspection, steerage class passengers arrived by ferry or barge to Ellis Island. This area was much like a modern airport, with baggage claim, a cafeteria, a ticket office, and a coin exchange. Immigrants entered into the “Great Hall” or “Registering Room” where they would learn whether they were permitted to enter the country. When Ellis Island first opened, immigrants were kept in pens, but officials later drew lines on the floor for a more humanizing experience.
Immigrants were quizzed about the answers they had given on the ship manifest back home, then received one of three answers about their status: they were admitted to work in the United States, they were detained to be asked more questions or spend time in the hospital, or they were excluded and sent back home at the cost of the shipping company that brought them. Admitted immigrants did not become citizens, although some later apply for citizenship, but instead have permission to work in the United States, similar to the modern green card system.
Now marked to be admitted or detained, immigrants went down one of three staircases: a left staircase for regular admitted immigrants, the center staircase for detained immigrants, and a third staircase for immigrants heading out west. Remarkably, eighty percent of immigrants went west during Westward Expansion. Detained immigrants went before a Board of Special Inquiry for further questioning. This board did not want immigrants to become a “public charge”, that they could get a job and not rely on welfare, or that they did not have unamerican views, like anarchy or polygamy. After all this questioning, only two percent of immigrants at Ellis Island were excluded; half for legal reasons, and half for medical reasons. The first person to be admitted through Ellis Island was a young Irish woman named Annie Moore, and her story is beloved by the park.
Compared to modern ideas about diversity, the immigrants before and during Ellis Island came from only a small part of the world population, primarily from Europe. Ellis Island itself was created during a time of peak immigration by the federal government to improve regulation and attempt to create a more fair and equally experience for all immigrants. Prior to this, immigration was handled at the state level, with rules varying depending on the state. In 1855, the State of New York processed immigrants through Castle Clinton at Battery Park in Manhattan, NY, which is now its own national park site.
By 1890, the federal government took over this office and added the Barge Office in Manhattan. Two year later, in 1892, a federal immigration office made of Georgia pine was constructed and burned down by 1897. The immigration office still standing on Ellis Island was constructed of not burnable stone and brick by 1900. Peak immigration came in 1907, with 1.2 million immigrants arriving in the United States, of which 1 million were processed through Ellis Island. Immigration began coming to an end in the 1920s with the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, signed by President Calvin Coolidge. The federal government established a quota system and later a visa system, requiring processing to happen overseas rather than in the United States. By 1924, Ellis Island was used as a deportation site, and after World War II, it became obsolete.
Horrucks continued her presentation by giving three examples of immigrants to the United States who came through Ellis Island and settled in the Blackstone River Valley. She had difficulty finding such people, as French-Canadian immigrants to Woonsocket, RI came overland, while Portuguese immigrants in New Bedford or Providence arrived at those ports.
The first immigrant traced by Horrucks was Sarah Tracy, an Irish immigrant from Cork, ended up in Providence after arriving in Ellis Island in 1889. She was either 18 or 28 years old, was supposed to live with her sister Ellen on Hospital Street in Providence, and had about $5 on her at the time of arrival. Tracy became a domestic servant on Benefit Street, the wealthy section of Providence, and her paper trail then ran out, as she likely got married.
The second immigrant was Yeprem Mosgofian settled in Armenian community in Whitinsville, working in the Whitin Machine Works foundry and living with his uncle Harry and aunt Lucy, whose birth names were likely Ermine and Lucia. Mosgofian had been born around the time of the Armenian Genocide, moved to France with his sister, and then survived World War I. He left France without his sister in 1919 and traveled by steamship to Ellis Island. Mosgofian became an American citizen some time in the 1930s, but he travelled back to France to visit friends and family several times throughout his life.
The third immigrant was Costanza, who Horrucks described as making her life difficult. He came from Italy to Ellis Island when he was eighteen years old, settling Milford, MA to work on the looms at Draper Corporation, called DCorp in records, where he was employed for thirty years. He was described on his immigration papers as a small man, about five feet and two inches tall, with chestnut hair and eyes. Costanza had a wife and children who remained in Italy, so he frequently visited them.
Horrocks and D’Elia concluded with further conversation and a brief summary of the presentation. D’Elia emphasized that immigrants did not always intend to stay in the United States and frequently traveled between countries. The immigration process created a mesh of people coming together to form the American culture of today. Horrocks closed by reading a passage from the famous poem, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, whose words are inscribed on the tablet held by the Statue of Liberty.