The park service does have party lines, but this isn't one of them, Nerd. For many years after working there I continued my research and wrote freelance articles about Ellis. And who better to know exactly what is a "party line," but one who works there? Those who are in the position to present them don't always do what they're told, just because they KNOW this is the preferred format. (NPS during the first two or three years of operation at Ellis told us to absolutely NOT collect personal stories, saying that it would "invade the privacy of those individuals." It took them a while to figure out how dumb that idea was.)

Despite the relative antiquity of the period in question, the law required the steamship companies to keep very good paper records. If a company brought over anyone who was not entitled to enter the U.S., that company had to bear the expense of detaining the person at Ellis and their transport back to their country of origin. If the individual was minor, they paid for a parent or other responsible adult to accompany them back. It became critical that those manifests be accurate regarding the personal and legal information for each immigrant. There were always manifests, and they became more and more strict through the years.

Despite the difficulties that states and feds and various agencies have with finding and keeping track of immigrants today, there was a degree of competence in tracing them 100+ years ago. You missed my point about the amount of time spent on Ellis and what actually happened during the inspection. Thousands of people a day went through there, and regardless of whether they had decided to change their names or not, the staff didn't have time to change names all day long. You had to have papers that corresponded with the legal information on the manifest. If you didn't match that information, or if you appeared to be unable to enter the U.S. one you got there, then you were detained. You didn't arrive at Ellis and tell them you were "Smith" if the name on the manifest and your papers said something else. Those who passed through the inspection successfully left Ellis with the same name that was reflected on all of the papers that they had when they reached the island (unless, as noted above, a marriage took place on the island).

Many annecdotal stories from people who have "no reason to lie" may well be told because they have reason to want to latch onto what is a charismatic larger story told, mistakenly, about an ancestsral trip through Ellis Island. I have a name change story in my family, in my mother's generation--my aunt married a fellow from Turkey whose name caused enough difficulties that they shortened it by a couple of syllables. But it didn't happen at the airport when he flew into the U.S. and went through U.S. Immigration questioning!

There are plenty of jokes that make the rounds about name changes at Ellis, and believe me, we were pretty good at telling them, and visitors would share theirs with us. Names did get changed, and the intent to do so may have been born at Ellis or on the ship on the way over. But of all of the pieces of paper issued to 12 to 16 million immigrants at Ellis, not a single piece has come back to document that a name was changed there. So annecdote is just that, an annecdote. A fond story passed through time. It's the folk process, but it isn't the same as history.

SRS