One hundred and thirty years ago, on January 1, 1892, the first federal immigration station in the U.S. opened on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. That day nearly 700 immigrants started not just a new year but a new life in a new land (to them). That day led to joys for some and sorrows for others.
 |
| Ellis Island federal immigration station, 1892~97 |
Annie Moore (1877~1924), an Irish émigré, was the first immigrant to pass through the new Ellis Island station. Here is the link to an informative History.com story about her.
 |
| Annie Moore statue |
Following Annie, and the 700 other immigrants who moved through the immigration facility on that opening day, that year over 400,000 immigrants were processed at the Ellis Island station.
That original immigration station on Ellis Island was, sadly, destroyed by fire in 1897, but by that time it had processed a whopping 1,500,000 immigrants.
In memory of Annie Moore, in 1997 Irishman
Brendan Graham wrote a poem titled “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” (which
you can read at this link). Here is the first stanza and refrain of that
poem:
On the
first day of January / Eighteen ninety-two
They opened Ellis Island and they let / The people through
And first to cross the threshold / Of that isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from Ireland / Who was all of fifteen years
Isle of hope, isle of tears / Isle of freedom, isle of fears
But it's not the isle you left behind / That isle of hunger, isle of pain
Isle you'll never see again / But the isle of home is always on your mind
The First Immigrants
Most of the immigrants in 1892, like Annie Moore,
were from Europe. According to this History.com
article, “The reasons they left their homes in the Old World included war,
drought, famine and religious persecution, and all had hopes for greater
opportunity.”
Some did well. Despite the various initial challenges,
many went on to gain what they were seeking in the U.S. The stories we mostly hear,
such as in this YouTube
video, are by or of people who were successful. They, thankfully,
experienced the joys of immigration.
But, unfortunately, there are other stories
also. Many had a terribly tough life. They experienced the sorrows of
immigration. Most of those, perhaps, did not have a life any worse than in the land
from which they came, but it was certainly not the life they dreamed of upon
reaching Ellis Island.
I first began thinking about this matter when
doing research for my blog
post on Walter Rauschenbusch last September. As I wrote then, from 1886 to
1897 he served as the pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, located in
the slum section of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen.
Many of those people had passed through Ellis
Island, or had come through other facilities a few years before 1892. The unsatisfactory
living conditions of many of those earlier immigrants are depicted in the book How
the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob A. Riis.
Last year I read part of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The
Jungle, and I soon will finish reading Mary Doria Russell’s captivating
historical novel, The
Women of Copper Country (2019).
The former “portrays the harsh conditions and
exploited lives of immigrants” in Chicago, mainly in the meatpacking industry,
and in similar industrialized cities.
Russell’s brilliant book graphically depicts
the plight of immigrants who worked in the copper mines owned by the Calumet
and Hecla Mining Company in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Specifically, it
is about the history-changing strike there of 1913-14, of which I had known nothing.
Many of those exploited immigrants had most
likely entered the U.S. at Ellis Island. But their joy upon arriving turned to
sorrow because of the harsh conditions they faced and had to endure for many
years after arriving.
The Immigrants Now
The question for us now is this: how are we
USAmericans treating the many immigrants who are entering our country now? Many
don’t have immigration documents, but neither did the 1,500,000 who passed through
the first immigration station on Ellis Island.
.jpg)