ELLIS ISLAND : ROMANTIC
I'm one of the people who got up in the middle of the night to get into the original passenger lists database site when it first opened years ago, sure I had ancestors who came to the United States, processed through ELLIS ISLAND. Oh, that site was just so jammed up.
I was half right. I eventually learned ancestors came through New York before Ellis. Other ancestors avoided steerage class - third class tickets - and thus getting off at Ellis. First and second class passengers got off with ease at Castle Garden first and did not have to go through the medical inspection required at Ellis. Ancestors bought tickets for other ports. It depended on where their final destination might be but prices for tickets could be competitive. New York Harbor was busy with ships. It seems to me immigrants were unloaded by the hundreds.
The city was daunting for people who left villages and an agricultural way of life. Though the medical examination was brief - about five minutes - and focused on noticeable eye infections and obvious mental illness, it was an intimidating exam. Unscrupulous cab drivers and thieves and con artists awaited the unsuspecting immigrant with a difference in language and village innocence. Sometimes the person was thieved of the money they had taken years to earn. As a result authorities wanted to know that an immigrant had a contact - somewhere to go - or that someone was meeting them just outside.
What New York had going for it was the trains. You could get almost anywhere if you got off a ship in New York and then made your way to the train station.
Millions of Americans do have an ancestor who came through Ellis Island though. Their people came into the U.S. witnessing the Statue of Liberty holding her torch high above the New York Harbor. They were filled with so much hope that this country would be the place to have a better life. They'd been on board from 10 days from German ports to a week leaving Southhampton. Or they had crossed from Liverpool or sailed the Mediterranean. Steerage immigrants had not seen much of the ocean during their trip though. They were usually only allowed on deck to stretch and breath for an hour a day. Then it was back down into the least desirable part if the ship, called steerage because a passenger could feel the movement of the ship. It could be dim, crowded, noisy, and smelly. It was not the place for a pretty young woman alone though more than once now I've met people whose ancestors met on the boat over and decided to marry.
So the other day I decided to revisit the original Ellis Island database, which has an "excuse our dust" apology up as the promise is made that it's being upgraded. I tried the password I had remembered twice and it didn't work. So I decided to change my password. In the associated email, which was consistent, came the message that the deed was done. I went to login at Ellis again with the new password but I got an alert that due to three password attempts my "account" was blocked. I tried more than a half hour later. Still blocked. So I followed the link to Administrator, where I filled out a contact and complaint form. Up came the capcha. I filled that in correctly and it fed me another one; it presented the whole form again blank. At that point I'd wasted a half hour and was too frustrated to continue. Is this the "dust"? My opinion? The only reason this site wants you to have an account to use it is because that's tied into their increasingly feeble offerings to fund raise. They went and sold their data to other databases that charge fees to use them years ago, databases which are not as temperamental. Sorry, but if they thought their data was this precious to be restricted they shouldn't have. And this site started out free to use without a login.
Maybe another day.
So. You may decide to navigate the original Ellis Island database site or use another database which contains these records.
Note that "New York" ship records found elsewhere will possibly include records of 1st and 2nd class passengers, crew, and pre-Ellis records. You might also find those detained or hospitalized. That could be interesting for your family history narrative.
Be aware that you may eventually find the same passenger coming in more than once, which means they may have first gone on a vacation, a go see, meeting up with relatives or friends, and then they went back to put their affairs in order.
(The Breman, Germany lists of departures from Europe are the only ones I know of.)
Typically men came first and then sent their wives tickets, or went back for them and came with a family group. I found one young lady who'd been orphaned who crossed with a designated escort. In some cases men went back and forth as seasonal laborers - this was common of Hungarian and Italian men. What happened in those months couples were apart?
I'll post the next advisory in a few days.
Continue to the best of your ability to stay safe.
C 2021
This post is part of a series of posts focused on Ellis Island, New York Harbor, and Industrial Age immigrants.
