![]() ![]() After briefly detaining Woodhull, officials allowed him to enter the country-but not before changing his name back to Mary Johnson. A notable exception to the name changing 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 man. Some immigrants voluntarily chose to change their names to help assimilate into American culture, but they did so before they left their home country or after they had gained admission to the United States. Immigration officials merely checked the person’s identity against the manifests of the ships that brought them to America, and there was no policy advising them to forcibly alter names. Immigrants didn’t have their names changed at the island.Īmerican cultural lore is rich with tales of immigrants’ ethnic sounding names being Anglicized or shortened during their passage through Ellis Island, yet there is no evidence that such a practice ever took place. ![]() Of the 12 million people who passed through its doors between 18, only around 2 percent were deemed unfit to become citizens of the United States. Despite the litany of guidelines for new immigrants, the number of people denied entry at Ellis Island was quite low. New arrivals could also face rejection if they were anarchists, had a criminal record or showed signs of low moral character. In later years, doctors at Ellis Island even devised puzzles and memory tests to ensure that certain immigrants were intelligent enough to find work. Questionable candidates were forced to submit to more detailed questioning and medical exams, and any signs of contagious disease, poor physique, feeblemindedness or insanity could see an immigrant denied admittance on the grounds that they were likely to become a ward of the state. Most were allowed to pass by in a matter of seconds, but those whom the doctors deemed physically or mentally deficient were marked with chalk and taken away for additional screening. Upon arrival at Ellis Island, immigrants were ushered into a room called the Great Hall and paraded before a series of medical officers for physical inspection. Immigrants were subject to physical and mental exams to ensure they were fit for admittance to the United States. Around the turn of the century, crooked immigration officials were known to take $1 or $2 bribes in exchange for letting immigrants get off in Manhattan without first going through inspection at Ellis Island. The stopover was occasionally clouded by corruption. During the detour, American citizens and first and second-class passengers were allowed to enter the country after only a brief inspection, but steerage passengers were herded onto ferries and shuttled to Ellis Island for further processing. The waters surrounding the island were too shallow for transatlantic ships to navigate, so most docked and unloaded their passengers in Manhattan. While Ellis Island was the official entry point for immigrants to the United States, it wasn’t the first piece of American soil they encountered. The island wasn’t the first place immigrants landed when they arrived in New York. VIDEO: Deconstructing History: Ellis Island Explore the legacy of this symbol of American immigration. Today, a statue of Moore and her brothers is kept on display at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Treasury Department official and a Catholic chaplain were on hand to welcome Moore, and Ellis Island’s commissioner awarded her a $10 gold piece to mark the occasion. The first would-be immigrant to set foot on the island was Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork, Ireland who had crossed the Atlantic with her 11 and 7-year-old brothers en route to reuniting with family in New York. The first immigrants to arrive at Ellis Island were three unaccompanied minors.Įllis Island accepted its first new arrivals on New Year’s Day 1892, when the steamship Nevada arrived with 124 passengers from Europe. It reverted to the name “Ellis Island” in the years after the last hanging in 1839, and later served as a Navy munitions depot before being repurposed as a federal immigration station. 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” after the wooden post, or gibbet, where the bodies of the deceased were displayed. ![]() Long before it became a way station for people looking for a new beginning, Ellis Island-named for its last private owner, Samuel Ellis-was known as a place where condemned prisoners met their end. ![]() It was used for pirate hangings in the early 1800s. ![]()
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