Why Dont We Open Ellis Island Again

1. Information technology was used for pirate hangings in the early 1800s.

Long before it became a way station for people looking for a new outset, Ellis Isle—named for its terminal private owner, Samuel Ellis—was known equally a place where condemned prisoners met their stop. For most of the early 19th century, the island was used to hang convicted pirates, criminals and mutinous sailors, and New Yorkers eventually took to calling it "Gibbet Island" afterward the wooden post, or gibbet, where the bodies of the deceased were displayed. Information technology reverted to the name "Ellis Island" in the years after the last hanging in 1839, and later served every bit a Navy munitions depot before being repurposed as a federal immigration station.

2. The showtime immigrants to arrive at Ellis Island were iii unaccompanied minors.

Ellis Island accepted its first new arrivals on New year's day'southward Day 1892, when the steamship Nevada arrived with 124 passengers from Europe. The first would-be immigrant to fix foot on the island was Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork, Republic of ireland who had crossed the Atlantic with her eleven and seven-year-old brothers en road to reuniting with family in New York. A U.S. Treasury Department official and a Catholic clergyman were on manus to welcome Moore, and Ellis Island'southward commissioner awarded her a $x gold piece to mark the occasion. Today, a statue of Moore and her brothers is kept on display at the Ellis Isle Immigration Museum.

VIDEO: Deconstructing History: Ellis Isle Explore the legacy of this symbol of American immigration.

three. The isle wasn't the offset identify immigrants landed when they arrived in New York.

While Ellis Island was the official entry betoken for immigrants to the U.s., it wasn't the kickoff piece of American soil they encountered. The waters surrounding the isle were also shallow for transatlantic ships to navigate, so virtually docked and unloaded their passengers in Manhattan. During the detour, American citizens and get-go and 2d-form passengers were immune to enter the country after merely a brief inspection, merely steerage passengers were herded onto ferries and shuttled to Ellis Island for further processing. The stopover was occasionally clouded by abuse. Around the plow of the century, crooked immigration officials were known to take $one or $ii bribes in commutation for letting immigrants get off in Manhattan without first going through inspection at Ellis Island.

4. Immigrants were subject to physical and mental exams to ensure they were fit for admittance to the Usa.

Upon inflow at Ellis Island, immigrants were ushered into a room called the Cracking Hall and paraded before a serial of medical officers for physical inspection. Most were allowed to pass by in a matter of seconds, simply those whom the doctors deemed physically or mentally deficient were marked with chalk and taken away for boosted screening. Questionable candidates were forced to submit to more detailed questioning and medical exams, and any signs of contagious illness, poor physique, feeblemindedness or insanity could meet an immigrant denied comprisal on the grounds that they were likely to become a ward of the state. In later years, doctors at Ellis Island even devised puzzles and memory tests to ensure that certain immigrants were intelligent plenty to find piece of work. New arrivals could also face rejection if they were anarchists, had a criminal record or showed signs of low moral grapheme. Despite the litany of guidelines for new immigrants, the number of people denied entry at Ellis Island was quite low. Of the 12 million people who passed through its doors betwixt 1892 and 1954, only effectually 2 percent were accounted unfit to get citizens of the United States.

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5. Immigrants didn't have their names changed at the island.

American cultural lore is rich with tales of immigrants' ethnic sounding names beingness Anglicized or shortened during their passage through Ellis Island, notwithstanding there is no evidence that such a exercise ever took place. Clearing officials merely checked the person'southward identity against the manifests of the ships that brought them to America, and there was no policy advising them to forcibly change names. Some immigrants voluntarily chose to alter their names to aid assimilate into American culture, but they did so before they left their habitation state or after they had gained admission to the United States. A notable exception to the name irresolute policy came in 1908, when a traveler named Frank Woodhull admitted that he had been born a woman named Mary Johnson and had spent the previous 15 years living as a human being. After briefly detaining Woodhull, officials allowed him to enter the state—but not before changing his proper name dorsum to Mary Johnson.

6. Famed New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia worked at Ellis Isle.

Before he became the outset man to win 3 consecutive terms as mayor of New York, the peppery and reform-minded politico Fiorello LaGuardia spent three years on staff at Ellis Isle between 1907 and 1910. The son of Italian immigrants, LaGuardia was fluent in Italian, Croatian and Yiddish, and he served every bit ane of the island's many translators while attending NYU police schoolhouse at night. LaGuardia would go on to stand for many Ellis Isle immigrants in deportation cases during his early years as an chaser.

vii. It was used as a detention facility during WWI and WWII.

Shortly afterwards the United States alleged war on Germany in 1917, the authorities turned a suspicious eye toward all High german-born, non-naturalized citizens residing within its borders. Potential "conflicting enemies" were placed under harsh restrictions, and those suspected of harboring pro-High german sentiment were rounded upward and detained. Since immigration had tapered off World War I, officials designated Ellis Isle every bit one of the principal belongings centers for would-be enemies of the state, and some 1,500 people were somewhen detained at that place. The island's double life equally a prison later continued during Earth War II, when it was used to house suspected Nazi sympathizers.

An immigrant family on the dock at Ellis Island, c. 1925. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

8. It eventually became more famous for deportations than immigration.

Ellis Isle'southward function equally a gateway for immigrants began to modify in the early on 1920s, when a series of federal laws ended the open up door clearing policy and established quotas for the number of new arrivals to the The states. By 1925, the government had likewise shifted the inspection process from American ports to the U.Southward. consulates abroad, leaving Ellis Isle to operate primarily as a detention heart and deportation point for undesirable immigrants. The island was used to imprison and evict suspected communists and political radicals during the Cherry Scare (agitator Emma Goldman was a notable deportee), and later on served as a detention center for communists during the Cold War. The authorities'southward legally ambiguous detainment policies eventually spawned a series of high profile lawsuits that stained Ellis Island'south reputation with the American public. In Nov 1954, the port was closed for practiced as part of a federal cost-saving measure.

9. It wasn't opened to the public until 1976.

When the U.Due south. government tried to sell Ellis Island in the 1950s, would-exist developers proposed everything from a drug rehab facility to a resort marina and even an experimental "city of the time to come" designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. None of the schemes for individual development got off the ground, nonetheless, and the "gateway to America" spent the next 20 years in political limbo. The island was finally opened for tours in 1976, simply plans for a historical museum or renovation didn't come together until the 1980s, when automotive pioneer Lee Iacocca helped spearhead a fundraising project for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The restored island was opened to the public in September 1990, and it at present receives around three million visitors each year.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-ellis-island

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