United States

° New York ° Castle Garden and Ellis Island

New York: Castle Garden and Ellis Island

The Seaport district at the lower end of Manhattan Island dates back to the 1600s and, over a period of 300 years, grew into one of the City's most vital commercial centers, serving as the international gateway to New York.

New York became a great city because of its access to the sea and through the 17th and 18th centuries, the city and the port grew steadily.

The first federal immigration law, the Naturalization Act, passed in 1790, allowed all white males living in the U.S. for two years to become citizens.

When the first mass of immigrants started in 1814, nearly 5 million people arrived from northern and western Europe over the next 45 years.

Castle Garden

Castle Garden, one of the first state-run immigration depots was opened by the state of New York at the Battery in lower Manhattan in 1855. Officials helped immigrants change money, buy railroad tickets, and find a place to stay.

Ireland's potato blight and pressures from Great Britain struck in 1846, leading to to the immigration of over one million Irish in the next decade.

Concurrently, large numbers of Germans began fleeing political and economic unrest.

During the late 1800s, New York was the largest port of entry for immigrants arriving to the United States.

Critics claimed that the depot brought down property values and that the immigrants "smelled bad."

January 9, 1864, Marin Journal, Marin County, California

The emigrants who have arrived at Castle Garden, New York since January last to December 1 number, according to the offical report of the Commissioners of Emigration, 146,519. The number the previous year to the corresponding date was 67,499.

June 26, 1878, Daily Alta California, San Francisco.

New York, January 1st.

Mormon Immigrants. NEW YORK, June 25th — The steamship Montana, from Liverpool, brought yesterday to this port 200 Mormons on their way to Salt Lake. Jackson, Superintendent of Castle Garden, says he has computed the number of Mormons who have arrived at Castle Garden since 1855 at 35,000.

July 1887, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

Ignorant Dupes

Three Hundred Mormon Converts About to Sail from Europe.

New York, July 19th (Special) -- The Castle Garden officials have received information that some 400 converts to Mormonism are making arrangements to sail from Liverpool for New York, and it is expected that the Latter Day Saints will arrive in this port at an early day. Some of them will settle in New Mexico, but the majority will go to Utah. Mormon missionaries have been making renewed exertions to secure converts in Europe of late, but they met with much less success than in former years.

August 2, 1888, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

PAUPER IMMIGRANTS.
Congressman Morrow Sees Them Land at Castle Garden.

New York, August 1st — Although the Congressional Committee investigating the immigration question has adjourned until Monday, in consequence of the absence of Ford, who was called away by the death of his sister, individual members are still pursuing the subject informally. Morrow of California to-day visited Castle Garden, and without disclosing his identity quietly observed the progress of landing immigrants. He paid especial attention to the manner in which the immigants were questioned. "Suppose," he said, after leaving the garden, " I am a criminal, an exconvict, or any other objectionable character, and I land at Castlie Garden. The examiners have no suspicion of my real character, and I simply tell them l am John Jones, am going to Pittsburg to look for work, and have money enough for my wants. How are they going to discover anything! My bill now before Congress provides that every immigrant landing must show a certificate from the American Consul at the port where he embarked, stating everything on his eligibility to land. This is the only means I see of effectually preventing objectionable immigration."

Thursday, July 19, 1888, Hamilton Daily Democrat, Hamilton, Ohio

The Immigration of Foreigners

In 1820 there were a little over 8,000. In 1825 a little more than 10,000. In 1830, 23,000. And in 1885, 45,000; 1840 does not quite reach 100,000, but 1845 goes over that figure up to 114,000.

From that date, the tide has risen higher, and constantly higher, with only occasional ebbing. In 1865 them were over 200,000. In 1870 over 300,000. In 1872 over 400,000. In 1892, 788,502. This was the maximum figure touched.

The total immigration during those years, from 1820 to 1887, amounts of 13,802,771. The effect of pouring such a vast bulk of foreign people, with foreign ideas, into our land, has been nearly as great on ourselves as on them. Our Institutions have been largely modified, and are in danger of still greater modification.

Globe-Democrat

January 2, 1889, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
During the year 383,595 immigrants landed at Castle Garden, an increase of 1977 over the previous year.

April 9, 1890, San Francisco Call, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

IMMIGRANT EXAMINATIONS. Castle Garden Methods Being Investigated by a Congressional Committee.

NEW YORK, April 8.— The Congressional Sub-committee on Immigration has opened its hearing here.

Castle Garden, New York
Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, 1887

Secretary Jackson of the Board of Immigration testified concerning the method of examining the immigrants. They pass single file before the Registers by whom they are questioned as to age, destination, health, whether they have been a public charge or were convicted of crime, and the name of friends in this country. These statements are not made under oath, and a re-examination is ordered by the inspectors whenever the answers are not satisfactory. The largest number of immgrants ever landed in one day at Castle Garden was 1000. About one out of six immigrants is rejected.

April 8, 1890, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Imported Under Contract.

New York, April 17th. — It was discovered this morning at Castle Garden that of 1403 French and Italian immigrants on board the steamship Cachemere the majority were bound for Pittsburg under contract. The United States Contract Labor Inspectors have gone to the steamer, prepared to arrest all suspicious parties. A number of immigrants were held for a time, bul were afterwards released, as the evidence against them was Insufficient.

January 23, 1890, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

"GO WEST. YOUNG MAN."

New York Officials Have Gone Back on y"* Famous Saying. New Yoek, January 22d.—

The Castle Garden authorities seem to make it their special business to keep Euiopean immigrants from reaching California. Several weeks ago there was the case of the Oakland girl who was separated from her lover on penalty of re-shipment to Germany. Four days since a family enroute to Los Angeles was detained because short of money, and yesterday the case of Johannes Rammer, a German immigrant, came to light.

Rammer has been shut up in prison on Ward's Island since January 15th, the only reason being that he retused to buy his railroad ticket before he left the Garden. Rammer is a barber and landed at Castle Garden from Stuttgart January 14

His parents are well-to-do peopie, and before he left home his father gave him $1,000 to support himself in America in case he failed to obtain employment. Besides the money he also had in his possession two large trunks filled with brand new clothing.

As soon he arrived at the Garden he announced that he was bound for San Francisco. He was approached by an agent, who asked where he was going. Rammer told him, and the agent inquired if he had bought a ticket yet, and then asked him to buy a ticket in Castle Garden. Rammer refused to do this, when the agent told him if he did not buy his ticket in the Garden that he would not be allowed to proceed on his journey.

When he finally refused to have anything whatever to do with the agent, be was told that unless he bought a ticket at the Garden he would be arrested and detained as a prisoner. That afternoon Rammer was approached by two officers, who took him to the examination-room and examined him. They made a report to the Commissioners, according to Rammer's story, stating that considering the large amount ot money be had ia his possession, it was not advisable to allow him to go out of the Garden unprotected, as he was likely to be robbed or swindled. They stated that he was quite ignorant and not capable of taking care of himself.

On reading the report of the Inspectors, the Commissioners of Emigration ordered that Rammer be detained as a prisoner on Ward's Island. The case was yesterday stated before the Supreme Court on habeas corpus.

January 12, 1891, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Castle Garden.

After serving for well nigh half a century as the reception hall and temporary home of 9,000,000 strangers and pilgrims to the shores of the New World, Castle Garden, that quaintly, ugly combination of fortress and shanty, which, in one guise or another, has occupied a corner of Battery Park, New York, since the days of Dutch domination, is once more to be decorated with a "For Rent" sign. The immigrants of the future are to set foot on other landing piers than those which, since 1855, have hidden the warlike embrasures of the old fort.

The site now occupied by Castle Garden was originally a rocky islet in the bay about 300 yards from the mainland. When the Dutch rulers of New York selected the spot to build a fort there, it was connected with the shore by a drawbridge of wood and stone, and the river waters flowing all around it served all the purposes of a moat.

In 1824, on the occasion of the second visit of Lafayette to America, the interior was turned into a ballroom, where the nation's guest was welcomed by the notabilities of the city and vicinity. In 1839 it was leased for a term of years to Richard French, who transformed the rather gloomy-looking structure into what would now be called a beer garden .

The summit of its prosperity was reached in 1850, when Jenny Lind made her first public appearance in this country there. From that night until May 5, 1855, when the Commissioners of Emigration entered upon the tenancy that they are about to relinquish, the Garden was devoted to a high class of operatic and other entertainments. For eight years the Board of Emigration had been endeavoring to check the tide of knavery and temptation in which immigrants of that day were certain to be engulfed directly upon their arrival. To do their work effectually it was necessary to secure some reception depot at which to centralize the entire influx of immigrants. Castle Garden, with its water front and ample space, seemed an excellent spot. And so it came about that tbe bureau established itself there.

Since its occupation by the Emigration Commissioners the Garden has known but little change. The greatest event in its recent history was the fire which, on the afternoon of July 10, 1876, entirely destroyed the wooden shell that "Col." French had erected over and around the fort when he transformed it into a concert hall.

October 31, 1896, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

"Put Up the Bars."

Vote for Grove L. Johnson, the author of the bill to "put up the bars and haul in the gang plank at Castle Garden" — to restrict immigration and give the laboring men now here less competition, more work and better wages. Bridgeport Chronicle-Union.

Food Will Win the War
We need immigrants to conserve food

1873. Mennonite Immigrants from Russia in New York for Journey to Dakota Territory.

On January 1, 1892, after immigration services were taken over by the federal government, a new and larger immigration station was opened on Ellis Island in New York harbor. Here, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, immigrants underwent medical examinations and answered questions about their work, money situations, and destinations. Later a literacy test was also administered. At its peak, more than 5000 people a day were processed at Ellis Island and during its tenure, more than 12 million people went through Ellis Island.

Beginning in 1875, the United States forbids prostitutes and criminals from entering the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. Restricted as well are “lunatics” and “idiots.” 1892

June 21, 1890, American Settler, London, England

The Rise and Fugure of New York City

New York City is destined to be the largest in the world. It already contains counting all the suburban portion, about 3,500,000 inhabitants, and as it grows at the rate of a third every ten years it will not take long before it is abreast of London. Such are the advantages of position that although its government always bad, and at times infamous, may have checked its growth slightly, nothing can stop the advance of the great commercial metropolis of America to the first place in point of population.

In the main town on Manhattan Island the inhabitants are reckoned at 1,600, 000 : Brooklyn 850,000; Jersey City 150,000; Long Island City, Hoboken, Staten Island, Yonkers, and other towns and villages around, making up the rest. Another disadvantage under which the commercial city labours is that its population comes under two States, being divided also into four cities and six counties. The port is lined by these cities, all really homogenous and governed by the same interest, one in sentiment and political aspiration, yet, as the New York Times has remarked, under conflicting municipal machines, which stand in the way of its healthful and orderly progress.

The tendency, however, is to consolidation, though there may be grave difficulties. By tunnels, by bridges, by railroads, and steamers, all the disjointed sections are being united ; and although two sovereign States may claim part of the New York harbour, the communication is so close, the interests so intimate, that a means will be devised by which this vast mass of population, increasing more rapidly than is any Western settlement may be united in one government. If New York city reaches as it quickly will to a population of 5,000,000 it might claim a government, apart from the States by which its two cities are misruled.

New York is the gateway, and if the American people incline to close those gates, that policy reduces the value of the port. Full and free imports stimulate to large exports, and if all the roads concentrated on New York for the exports and distributed the imports from New York, business would increase and the city would flourish to a still greater degree. Nothing can stop the growth, though something might impede, and New York city grows, and will continue to grow though ruled by a Tammany Hall, with Ward politicians to parcel out its municipal offices; though broken up into contending sections under different governments, and though the policy at Washington should continue to be to check to the utmost the import trade.

December 31, 1897, Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

JEWISH PATRIOTISM
Proved During the Fight for American Independence

NEW YORK, December 30. The chief paper read at the second day's session of the American Jewish Historical society's meeting was by Leon Huhner, on "New York Jews in the Struggle for American Independence." Mr. Huhner said that a larger proportion of the Jews were loyal to the American cause than any other residents of the state; that the Jews of '76 have for all time answered the question: "Can Jews be patriotic?" At the conclusion of Mr. Huhner's address there was some discussion on the paper of President Oscar Strauss, read yesterday, in reference to the ten lost tribes. As to the authority for the belief that the American Indians were the lost tribes, Dr. Cyrus Aller said that Monteclnos was the first Jew to originate the idea that the Indians were descended from the lost tribes. Dr. Kohler said that," Whoever was the first, he must have derived his view from Christian sources. Dr. Leo Welner of Harvard related some interesting folk stories from the German in relation to the lost tribes, which he gathered during the last year.

Ellis Island

Ellis was a sand bar in the Hudson River in the 1700s. Mohegan Indians who lived on the nearby shores call the island Kioshk, or Gull Island. In the 1630s, a Dutch man, Michael Paauw, acquired the island and renamed it Oyster Island for the plentiful shellfish on its beaches. During the 1700s, it was known as Gibbet Island, for its gibbet, or gallows tree, used to hang men convicted of piracy.

Around the time of the Revolutionary War, the New York merchant Samuel Ellis purchased the island, and built a tavern catering to local fisherman. After Ellis' death in 1794, New York State bought the island for $10,000 from Ellis' family. The U.S. War Department leased rights to use Ellis Island to build military fortifications and store ammunition during the War of 1812.

After the Civil War, Ellis Island was vacant until the government decided to replace the New York immigration station at Castle Garden which closed in 1890.

The first Ellis Island Immigration Station officially opens on January 1, 1892, as three large ships wait to land. Seven hundred immigrants passed through Ellis Island that day, and nearly 450,000 followed over the course of that first year. Over the next five decades, more than 12 million people will pass through the island on their way into the United States.

From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. Ellis Island is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast, within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty

When Ellis Island opened, a great change was taking place in immigration to the United States. As arrivals from northern and western Europe–Germany, Ireland, Britain and the Scandinavian countries–slowed, more and more immigrants poured in from southern and eastern Europe. Among this new generation were Jews escaping from political and economic oppression in czarist Russia and eastern Europe (some 484,000 arrived in 1910 alone) and Italians escaping poverty in their country. There were also Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks and Greeks, along with non-Europeans from Syria, Turkey and Armenia. The reasons they left their homes in the Old World included war, drought, famine and religious persecution, and all had hopes for greater opportunity in the New World.

On June 15, 1897, with 200 immigrants on the island, a fire breaks out in the main building. All immigration records dating back to 1840 and the Castle Garden era are destroyed. The immigration station is relocated to the barge office in Manhattan’s Battery Park.

It has been estimated that close to 40 percent of all current U.S. citizens can trace at least one of their ancestors to Ellis Island.

Immigrants were tagged with information from the ship’s registry and passed through long lines for medical and legal inspections to determine if they were fit for entry into the United States. From 1900 to 1914–the peak years of Ellis Island’s operation–some 5,000 to 10,000 people passed through the immigration station every day. Approximately 80 percent successfully passed through in a matter of hours, but others could be detained for days or weeks. ;

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9