Demuth - What Was Ellis Island?

What Was Ellis Island?

The Island of Hope.

Many people thought of Ellis Island that way. Millions and millions of immigrants came to this tiny island off New York City from 1892 to 1954. Ellis Island was their first stop in America. It had to be. Until they passed through there, newcomers could not set foot inside the United States.

Immigrants are people who leave their homeland behind, hoping for a better life. The immigrants stopping at Ellis Island mostly came from all over Europe. Many were escaping from terrible problems. Food was scarce in their homeland. There were no jobs. They were treated badly because of their religion. Although poor in money, immigrants were rich in hope. America meant freedom, jobs, and safety.

America was on everyones lips, said one boy who came from Poland. We talked about America. We dreamt about America. We all had one wishto be in America.

The immigrants traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, crammed into ships that generally took seven to ten days to reach America. After hard days at sea, they entered New York Harbor and caught sight of two small islands. One was Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty held up a flaming torch. A poem at the base of the statue welcomed the immigrants to America.

The second was Ellis Island, just a few hundred yards away. The greeting there was not as friendly. Ellis Island was a testing center run by the US government. Its purpose was to check immigrants and weed out the sick and unfit. The vast majority of immigrants passed the tests. They were free to go ashore and start their new life.

But over the years, at least 250,000 immigrants failed the tests. Those unlucky ones were not allowed into the United States. Sent back on the ships, they returned to where they had come from. This earned Ellis Island its other name: the Island of Tears.

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The Statue of Liberty

For over 125 years, the Statue of Liberty has stood tall as a symbol of freedom in New York Harbor. The statue was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States.

In 1903, part of a poem by Emma Lazarus entitled The New Colossus was inscribed on the base. Its famous last lines are a ringing welcome from America to its immigrants:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

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A Scrap of Land

At first, Ellis Island was just a small scrap of empty land, a little over three acres. It barely stuck out of the water at high tide. The local Native Americans called it Gull Island. Seagulls were the only creatures that lived there.

Around the time of the Revolutionary War, a farmer named Samuel Ellis bought the land. Although he later sold it, the island would keep his name.

Then, in 1808, the US government became the islands new owner. For a long while the island was only used for storing guns to protect the harbor. No one dreamed that one day Ellis Island would become the gateway to America for many waves of immigrants.

In fact, for most of the 1800s, the US government did not control immigration. There was an open door policy. That meant that any immigrant who wanted to could move there. The states were in charge of keeping track of the newcomers.

The flow of immigrants remained fairly slow until the mid 1800s. Then a huge wave of people started to pour into the country. Nine out of ten came from Ireland, England, or Germany. The state of New York alone admitted eight million immigrants from 1855 to 1890. They came through a station called Castle Garden at the tip of New York City.

Finally, in 1890, the federal government took over immigration from the individual states. It wanted to start testing newcomers to make sure they were free of disease and able to support themselves. Where would it build the first immigration station? Ellis Island seemed the perfect place. It was located in New York Harbor, where so many ships from Europe already docked.