Info Ellis Island

Subject: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: oombanjo
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 05:09 AM

Listening to a Sean Keane CD.I heard reference to Ellis Island .As this is a song that I would like to do I would like to know a little more of the history, Can any one help???

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 05:22 AM

Ellis Island was the main portal of entry to the United States for immigrants from Europe in the early part of the 20th century. Millions of people came through there...my grandparents included. It fell into terrible disrepair but underwent a massive restoration and reopened in 1990.   Here is the National Park Service's website, that includes a link to the history of the site and info about the current museum exhibits. Search for "ellis island" on Google for more information, including some commercial sites that I haven't examined too closely. Here are some fascinating stereoscopic photos of Ellis Island when it was active.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 06:23 AM

Oombanjo

The song Sean Keane sings is "Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears" by Brendan Graham". I'd been singing it for a year or so when BBC Radio 4 broadcast a couple of programmes about Ellis Island last year. I learned from these that Annie Moore was 13 (not 15) and I think the date of closure was different too. That's poetic licence for you....

Kitty

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 10:30 AM

Although it's not the song you requested, Jan Christensen has created "The ghosts of Ellis Island." If you wish to follow up, send me a PM and I will give you his e-mail address. Eric

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 12:20 PM

All four of my grandparents came to the US through the port of New York. My mother's parents entered via Ellis Island (as far as I know), but not my father's.

My great-uncle (father's father's older brother) was the first of the clan to make the move, and he saw people turned away at Ellis Island because of apparently minor illnesses. This frightened him, and so he instructed the rest of the family to avoid taking this chance by saving up for second-class fare (as opposed to third-class, also known as "steerage").

A second- (or, of course, first-) class ticket allowed you to stay on the ship when it stopped at Ellis Island to offload most of the immigrant passengers (those in steerage). You then entered the country via the regular terminal on the Hudson River in Manhattan, where customs/immigration was much more lenient.

I was able to visit Ellis Island about 12-15 years ago, shortly after it had been rehabilitated. Our kids were still young, and strongly impressed. Definitely worth the trip; the link above to the National Park web page probably provides as much info as I could.

The island is *very* close to Bedloes Island, site of the Statue of Liberty, and the ferry services allow you to visit either or both islands, coming either from the tip of Manhattan (Battery Park) or from Jersey City (Liberty State Park). The islands are actually *much* closer to the New Jersey ferry launch, which in turn is very convenient to the Turnpike. So, if you're not already in The City, it's easier/quicker/more convenient to approach Ellis Island and the Statue from NJ than from NY.

On the other hand, if you're already in NYC anyway, the longish voyage from the Battery is a nice tour of the harbor (especially in nice summer weather).

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 07:03 PM

If you know ot think you had relatives who came thru Ellis Island, you can search for them here.

http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/

my wife's father arrived in 1919, and was found easily.

(there is a requirement to register for detailed access to some records, but the preliminary search to see if the name(s) you want are there is free)...the detailed search will name ships and more, I gather..The preliminary search gives name, date,age at arrival and hometown of record. A well done site...

Subject: RE: Origins: Info Ellis Island
From: oombanjo
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 12:58 PM

Thanks to all for the information especially PoppaGator for the invite to visit,but its a long way from Beverley East Yorkshire England to New York. But who knows, My Wife and I have always wanted to visit America and I'm sure that one day we will. Thanks again to all.

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 09:58 PM

Oombanjo,

I worked as an interpretive historian at Ellis Island, for the National Park Service, for a couple of years in the late 1970's. Perhaps PoppaGator was on one of my tours! At that time you had to go through a very restricted route, with rangers, because it was so dangerous due to deterioration. Today major portions of Island One, the original landmass (built up by ballast and landfill) are open to the public to roam at will. I don't like it nearly as well, but that's because I had to learn so much about it and on practically every tour I had people who had immigrated and could tell us their stories. Alas, many of them are gone now and the island feels more empty because of it.

My friend Tom Bernardin, who worked with me at Ellis, lives in New York and has continued to work around Ellis, though as a professional tour guide. Some dozen or more years ago he advertised nationally for recipes that came over from the old world with Ellis immigrants. The response was wonderful and he has just now gotten a reprinting of the The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook. If you visit his web site you'll find a lot of information and links. He leads tours again now that the island is open.

I disagree with the recommendation that a tour from Manhattan is a great way to spend a day. It's a hellish, hot, long wait in the park. Plus you're stuck going first to Liberty and waiting around there for a while before the next leg of the trip to Ellis. The best bet is to pay $5.00 to the water taxi (over by the old fire station to the west of Castle Clinton and the dock for the Statue and Ellis) and get a quick ride across the harbor to Jersey City. They drop you off in Liberty State Park near the large restored train station (where immigrants from Ellis used to board trains to head into the U.S. if their heart's desire was to go somewhere other than New York City). Walk around to the front of that and buy a ticket to Ellis. It's a short wait, and easy ride, and when you're done at Ellis you can ride the Circle Line boat back to Manhattan, you don't need to retrace your steps.

Bernardin's book is only one of many sources of information. One that I think is still by far the best overall history of the island is by Ann Novotny called Strangers at the Door. (It's out of print, but I found a few via a search at Bookfinder.com) Ellis was once called Gibbet Island, and Bucking Island, and housed Fort Gibson. There were four forts protecting NY Harbor during the 1812 War, Fort Gibson on the mudflat that became Ellis, Castle Williams on Governor's Island, Castle Clinton on pilings at the foot of Manhattan, and the star-shaped Fort Wood on Bedloe's Island, which became the base for the statue on what is now called Liberty Island. Liberty Island has been squabbled over by New York and New Jersey, but is firmly in New York's hands. New York lost it's bid to keep all of Ellis, and now the landfill portion, Islands 2 and 3 (they're filled in now, but there used to be a second ferry slip, making the island look like a large "E.") New Jersey is beginning to offer tours of those hospital and contagious disease wards, though it is in very rough condition. The National Park Service has done some very interesting and innovative work to stabilize and begin to restore the buildings, and I believe some of it is quite original in the field of historic preservation.

From 1855 until 1890, each state processed it's own immigrants. There was a lot of corruption and abuse. In NYC the processing took place at Castle Garden. This former theater was in it's earliest life a fort called Castle Clinton. After the immigrant station closed, it was converted into the New York Aquarium, until the Brooklyn tunnel was built beneath it and the aquarium was moved to Coney Island. But I digress. . .

Federal law took the processing of immigrants away from the individual states in 1890, and in 1892 Ellis opened. In 1897 a fire destroyed the building and all of the records up to that point. It was rebuilt in brick and concrete and tile and reopened on January 1, 1900. They added on quite a bit for many years. 1906 and 07 were the heaviest years of immigrant processing there. By 1921 the Social Darwinists had pushed for radical renovation of the immigration laws and large groups were restricted or their numbers (in the form of quotas) were very limited. By 1924 a second immigration law pretty much put the end to the major job at Ellis. A number of other activities took place out there, during war time, and in later years it was noted more as a place to go if you were being deported. The Coast Guard was there for a number of years, and the Island finally closed in November of 1954.

Dr. Peter Sammartino in New Jersey was instrumental in getting the island open again. In 1975 Lyndon Johnson signed legislation binding it to the Statue of Liberty as a national monument, and in 1976 it opened for limited tours.

This is a history of the place, it isn't telling you about the people who passed through there. I don't know the song you're learning, so don't know what it talks about. But for some of the earliest published accounts of what immigrants experienced out there, look for a book by Thomas Pitkin called Keepers of the Gate. He was one of the Commissioners out at Ellis, and was responsible for cleaning up a lot of corruption. You'll find a lot of information in later sources.

SRS

Subject: Lyr Add: ELIS AYLAND / ELLIS ISLAND (Yiddish)
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:02 PM

Maggie, thanks for that fascinating bit of history. Now I understand why, when the Seattle Song Circle folks came to sing at San Juan Island National Park in 1985 or '86, you gave us all Statue of Liberty T-shirts as souvenirs!

To make this a musical thread, here's a Yiddish song, whose author I don't know:

ELIS AYLAND

O Elis Ayland, du grenets fun frayland
Vi groys un vi shreklech du bist!
Azelche r'tsiches, dos kenen nor ruches
Du plagst di geplagte umzist
Mit tsores gekumen, dem yam koym dershvumen
De getin der frayhayt derzen
Do kumt Elis ayland, der grenets fun frayland
Zogt, "Halt! du kenst vayter nit geyn"

In Jerry Silverman's singable translation (sorry, my Yiddish isn't nearly good enough to provide a more accurate one, but this seems fairly close):

O Ellis Island, you border of free land
How big and how fearful you are
You visit such crimes without reason or rhyme
On the people who come from afar
With greatest emotion they've just crossed the ocean
And seen freedom's goddess on high
But cruel Ellis Island, the border of free land
Says, "Halt! You can never pass by"

And those who did make it through didn't find the great golden land they were expecting. Again, from Jerry Silverman:

"In the decade between 1880 and 1890, 5,246,613 immigrants entered the United States. Among them, in 1881, was David Edelstadt, who came to America at the age of fifteen after escaping the terrible Kiev pogrom of May 8, 1881. He found employment in sweatshops and subsequently contracted tuberculosis. Because of his personal tragedy he was able to express in his poetry the sentiments of the exploited immmigrant worker. He died in 1892 at the age of 26." Here is his song, "Svetshop":

Shnel loyfn di reder
Vild klapn mashinen
In shop iz shutsik in heys
Der kop vert fartumlt
In oygn vert finster
Finster fun trern un shveys

Ich fil shoyn bay zich
Kayn gantsn eyver
Tsebrokhn, tsedrikt iz mayn brust
Ich ken shoyn far veytok
Mayn rukn nit boygn
Banacht lozt nit shlofn der hust

Loyft um der mayster
A khaye, a vilde
Er traybt tsu der sh'chite di shof
O, vi lang vet ir vartn
Vi lang vet ir duldn
Arbeter brider, vacht oyf!

Wheels turning so swiftly
Wildly pounding machinery
The shop is dirty and hot
My head, how it's aching
My eyes see but darkness
Darkness from tears and sweat

It just seems to me
That I'm torn to pieces
Broken and bent is my breast
The pain is so bad
That I can't bend my back
And coughing at night robs my rest

All around runs the foreman
A beast, a wild one
He drives to the laughter the sheep
Oh, how long will you wait
How long to be patient?
Wake up, working brother, don't sleep!

(Of course, the sweatshops didn't disappear in the beginning of the 20th century...they're still going strong, with other immigrants.)

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:45 PM

Mark,

I'd forgotten about those t-shirts! Tom Bernardin made those also, from a silk screened sketch by another ranger, Joe Craig. They were originally just for those of us who were rangers, but so many visitors saw our shirts and wanted them that he made a lot more. Tom couldn't sell them at the island as a ranger, but I don't remember what he did. Maybe had a friend sell the from a pushcart at the Battery? I remember I had a lot of extras. I still have some around here!

Only 2 percent of those passing through Ellis were deported, a number that is in the neighborhood of 250,000. The total numbers of those processed vary (remember, records were burned for five years of processing) from 12 to 16 million. I think they tend to use the 12 million number now. Many immigrants don't remember their time there, because the average was only a couple of hours.

The stories I could tell! I met some marvelous park visitors with wonderful stories. The first year I worked there the idiocy of the government was such that they said we were invading people's privacy if we collected stories, so they forbade it. On second thought, the next year, it was allowed and encouraged. Typical park service. :-(

Okay, just one story, since I can hear the wheels turning.

A smallish group (~40) arrived on a sunny late spring morning, the first tour of the day, over from New York. In the group was the family of an older gentleman originally from the Ukraine. He was 80, he said, and had been a young man when he passed through Ellis with his brother. He stood about 6' tall, had the tanned skin of a farmer, loads of character in the wrinkles on his trim, healthy face. With a shock of white hair that had once been black like his bushy eyebrows, a chizeled jaw, and a deep resonant voice with a wonderful accent, this man was absolutely charming. On the front steps, before entering the building, we spoke while waiting for the tour to assemble, and I asked if he'd been through Ellis. He had, and we spoke of it briefly.

From there, we walked into the ground floor and I spoke about the process of travelling--what to bring when you had to carry everything, how you most likely got there (steerage), what the shipping lines required, how long it took, etc. Then we walked to the great hall upstairs, and everyone was seated. At this point in my tour, I would normally ask if anyone had any stories to tell the group. But this man spoke right up, asked if he might say something. Even to think of it now brings a shiver up my spine! He told them everything I would, but in the first person! His voice was rich and carried in the room with his mix of good English and a wonderful accent, and he would have been perfect to narrate the story on tape or film. (But this was the time when we weren't allowed to collect stories or names--so many times I kick myself and wish I'd broken that stupid rule and gotten his name!)

The tour group was in tears, even though his story had a happy ending. They'd been delayed downstairs, with a chaulk mark put on his brother's coat. He brushed it off completely, so they were ignored by the officials at the top of the stairs in the Great Hall. It was just so marvelous to have him tell his story, and for all of us that was a tour in a million.

There are many, many equally affecting stories about Ellis. It's part of what Tom wanted to include in his cookbook--he doesn't claim that one can cook all of those dishes, because some of them use such ingredients or methods that they simply aren't made these days. It's the history and traditions people brought with them that are as important as the recipes (but his cardamom cookies are to die for!). And to get more of the story of being an immigrant, because in the end getting through Ellis was the easy part, you might want to visit the Tenement Museum and go on their tour on Orchard Street. I did that last summer, and have to say it was the most amazing place I'd visited in a long time. The building is like a time capsule, closed up for decades, and purchased by the museum before anyone had a chance to touch it. It may well become one of the Manhattan Sites in the NPS, or so I hear tell.

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 02:56 PM

Great stories and information!

I didn't mean to *recommend* coming from Manhattan -- I was really trying to present the New Jersey approach as the better, if lesser-known route, and then babbled on, trying to say something nice about coming from Manhattan. Guess I "went overboard."

When I was a kid (in central Jersey), Ellis Island was closed, with buildings visibly falling apart, and the Statue of Liberty could be reached *only* from Battery Park. Our usual route to the city was via the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which brought us to the very terminal building now standing in Liberty State Park. In those days, it was in the middle of a busy railyard and industrial area, not isolated at the edge of a park like today. Passengers got off the train and straight onto a ferry to Liberty Street (Wall Street area, very near what would later become the WTC site). You could see the Statue (as well as the derilict bulding of Ellis Island) *very* close to the Jersey City ferry terminal, but to get there, you had to first cross the Hudson to NYC and then catch another boat -- the only S-of-L ferry at the time -- from the Battery.

By the time renovation began on Ellis Island, I had moved away, visiting New Jersey only occasionally (once every two years for a while -- my parents would visit us in New Orleans on alternate years). I visited the Statue *and* the newly renovated/reopened Ellis Island with my own kids in the early '80s, using the nice convenient Liberty State Park (NJ) approach. (For me, the railroad terminal building was as imposing and nostalgic as the more famous attractions.)

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: GUEST
Date: 14 May 04 - 06:36 PM

i have been to eLLIS iSLAND and was overcome by the courage of those who got there and of the rigour they had to go through to get to manahttan, cholera, dysentry etc.6 second exam.
What is not so well documented is what happened to these people once they arrived, the bigotry, resentfullness of those who were already there and saw them as a threat etc etc etc.
What I want to know is what happenned between ellis island and getting to Manhatten or other areas of New York.
doea anyone know of songs that record this period......

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 May 04 - 12:57 PM

One stop is in the Bowery area of Lower Manhattan at the Tenement Musuem, mentioned above. Beyond that, search out some of the ethnic organizations (there are mnay fraternal organizations alive and well and selling life insurance these days).

Also listed above is a link for The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook. I've been helping Tom proof the pages (scanned to digitize it for a new offset printing) and update the list of ethnic organizations. Once the new printing is out (this summer), have your library get a copy through interlibrary loan if you don't want to buy a copy (though it is well worth the price, with great recipes and it does make very interesting reading--each family recipe is accompanied by memories of the people who came through Ellis). The list is updated with web addresses.

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 16 May 04 - 12:33 AM

Guest, there are a number of such songs in the Yiddish tradition, including two I cited in my post from last year up above. I'm not aware of others, but I'm sure they exist.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Big Tim
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:29 AM

According to the ellisisland records site, no one called Annie Moore, in their teens, passed thru Ellis Island. Age 6 and 20 are the closest for anyone of that name. What's going on ?

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 May 04 - 03:08 AM

I don't know the song that started this thread. Is that where this name comes from? Perhaps Annie Moore isn't her full name, or perhaps it was changed by she (or her parents--or is this an account of someone arriving alone?) after she passed through Ellis Island. This was a very typical thing to do, and name changes did not happen AT Ellis Island, so there would be no documentation of such.

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 May 04 - 03:29 AM

Okay, I went and looked at the song link above. That name was too familiar. She's well documented as the first individual to be processed at the new building. Look at the Novotny book and you'll find something about her, at least a mention. But as I suggest, perhaps Annie Moore isn't her full name. And I'd be willing to bet that the list of immigrants is far from complete.

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 May 04 - 03:41 AM

And once more: I've now read the song past the first verse. In general, it's a catalog of events, it's overly sentimental, and it's wrong.

When they closed down Ellis Island in 1943
Seventeen million people had come there for sanctuary
And in springtime when I came here
And stepped on to it's piers
I thought of how it must have been
When you're only 15 years

They closed Ellis Island in 1954. Period. Quota laws restricted immigration in 1921 and even moreso in 1924. But the island operated with several agenices using space until November 1954 and in those last few years any immigrants who were detained out there were sent there from somewhere else. They weren't arriving by ship in New YOrk harbor in the fashion they did in the early years.

The numbers who were processed there are estimated between 12 and 16 million, and I think the park service is happiest with the 12 million number. When the first building burned the records were destroyed so they're not sure (and names would have been lost). This song to me sounds like something generated at the time the Ellis Island Foundation was doing it's big thing. They seemed to feel the need to overly sentimentalize and sensationalize the immigration process to raise money to restore the island. They are also the only ones who produced that 17 million number. Annie is about the only thing that is correct. But just to be on the safe side, check BOTH grand openings--the one in 1892 and the one in 1900 when the new brick buildings were opened (after the wooden building burned in 1897).

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Big Tim
Date: 16 May 04 - 06:23 AM

According to the "Encyclopaedia of Ireland" re Ellis Island, "the first immigrant processed was Annie Moore, a 15 year-old from Cork. In 1993, President [of Ireland] Mary Robinson unveiled a statue of Moore at the Ellis island Immigraton Museum". (I must go and see it when I visit NY). I agree with you SRS re the heavy sentimentality of the song.

For anyone interested in (Irish) emigration to Canada and Grosse Ile, the quarantie station in the St. Lawrence, where thousands died of fever: try "Famine Diary" by Gerard Keegan, Wolfhound Press, 1991 (written in 1845, first published 1895). There's some debate about the authenticity of the Diary, but no argument about the facts.

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 04 - 09:15 AM

I think Annie Moore died after being hit by a streetcar in Waco, Texas. There's a statue of her at Ellis Island now, or was a few years ago. Does Annie's picture exist, or was it just the artist's fancy?

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 May 04 - 09:47 AM

The song reminds me of the opening page on Fred Mustard Stewart's novel Ellis Island. I was staying at a friends house one weekend after driving up from New York City, where I was working at Ellis. I found this on the bedside table and thought "ah ha! Maybe in his research he found some more stories," and started reading it, only to put it down after the first page. He had described Ellis Island as that jagged chunk of stone out in the harbor, like it was Alcatraz or something. I put the book down. He hadn't even bothered to go or to look at the place or to pick up an article about it or he'd know that Ellis sits on a mudflat in the harbor, enlarged and raised by landfill enough so it wouldn't disappear at high tide.

There are no piers at the island, as the song suggests, and there never were. The piers were in Jersey City behind it, and they stretched out so far that those who could swim often times escaped by swimming the 300 feet to the docks and were usually aided by the longshoremen working over there. Immigrants came to the island on a flat-bottomed ferry, entering the ferry slip, and leaving that same way if they were headed to New York City and environs. Those catching trains to destinations throughout the U.S. left from the back side of the island where a dock was situated closest to the Jersey City train station, now restored and a part of Liberty State Park. You go there now to visit Ellis Island from the Jersey side, and it's a much easier trip.

I spoke with Oscar Brand one time about finding songs to do with immigration and he said there should be many available. It has been a long time since that conversation, and at the time no one in the Park Service seemed inclined to follow up on my idea to include songs as part of a multi-media presentation. (I worked there before the restoration, when they weren't inclined to do much of anything but shore up the tour route we took visitors through and try to keep toilets flushing and potable water available).

SRS

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 16 May 04 - 11:42 PM

One place to start collecting immigration songs would be Jerry Silverman's collection The Yiddish Song Book. Here are some songs in the section entitled "Amerike," including quite a few about the immigrant experience after going through Ellis Island. These are Jewish songs, but no doubt the experience was similar for others.

Lidl fun Goldenem Land (Song of the Golden Land) by Mordechai Gebirtig
Shikt a Tiket (Send a Ticket)
Kesl Gardn (Castle Garden) by Morris Rosenfeld and Mark Warshawsky (Castle Garden was the processing center for immigrants before Ellis Island opened.)
Ellis Ayland (Ellis Island)
New Yorker Trern (The Tears of New York)
Mayn Rue Plats (My Resting Place) by Morris Rosenfeld -- a hauntingly beautiful song, one of my favorites
Mayn Yingele (My Little Son) by Morris Rosenfeld
Svetshop (Sweatshop) by David Edelstadt
Arbeter Froyen (You Working Women) by David Edelstadt
A Briv Fun Amerike (A Letter from America) by Mark Warshawsky

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: GUEST,Arieh Lebowitz
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:46 PM

You can hear the Yiddish poem Svetshop, by David Edelstadt, sung here:

It is the second item here:

http://faujsa.fau.edu/belarsky/belarsky_playlist.php?jsa_num=402850&queryWhere=jsa_num&queryValue=402850

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 08:33 PM

For a recent view of the island, check out the photos of Yuri Marder.

These apparently were taken prior to, or during, the restoration. You have to supply the crowds of people from your own imagination, but it's not too hard.

John

Subject: RE: Info Ellis Island
From: NH Dave
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 09:19 PM

The bigotry and resentment didn't come anything close to starvation, pogroms, or simple murder for being a despised minority in the old country. This is how we got so many hard working people, glad for a second chance at life, who made our country great, and brought so many different traditions along with themselves.

We're all immigrants in this country, from the "Native" Americans to the family who just stepped off the plane or walked across our border yesterday.

Dave