Want to Learn More About Ellis Island and Castle Garden?

For those of you who wish to become more knowledgeable about the history of Castle Garden, as well as Ellis Island, this is your chance. If you read through each of the exhibition's pages, you will learn more about Castle Garden including its interesting history (P. T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to America to perform at Castle Garden in 1850, before Castle Garden became an immigration station).

You can read about the early history of Ellis Island here: the opening of Ellis Island in 1891, the fire that gutted most of the buildings on the Island in 1897, as well as its reopening in 1900. You can also learn a bit about the hospital at Ellis Island as well as the rooftop playground that was created at the immigration station for children to play in beginning in 1904. Also there is an interesting but sad group of stories of immigrants who were rejected and sent back to the port from where they began their trans-Atlantic voyage.

This is an good augmentation of the previous Museum exhibition about Ellis Island, and is filled with interesting articles that were published in such defunct New York City newspapers as the Tribune, the Sun and the World around the turn of the twentieth century.

You can visit the exhibition at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-ellisisland.htm .

Castle Garden and Ellis Island: Ports of Immigration

If you haven't already visited the Museum's small, seven-page exhibition about Castle Garden and Ellis Island, you may wish to do so now.

You may enjoy the short texts on each page, as well as some photographs which you may never have seen before. Just added today is a page straight out of the Sun, a New York newspaper that last published in 1950. The article is dated May 1887 and is entitled,

NOTED AT CASTLE GARDEN.
A HALF HOUR AMONG A SHIP'S LOAD WAITING TO BE LANDED.
Weeding Out the Ailing and the Friendless and the Very Poor –
An Unhappy Russian Family – A Marriage in the Rotunda.

This article is one of the many one can find by searching in old newspapers, many of which would be interesting for those who enjoy "going back in time" and learning not only what such events as immigration was like for our ancestors, but also what people were likely to read in newspapers. One can only imagine what these people thought about Jews back then, compared to now. It does give one food for thought.

I am currently going through New York newspapers from the late 1800s through 1910, and I find it interesting to see what newspapers said about the Jewish people, about immigration (as well as the fear of too much immigration--especially the Jews!), etc. I will present some other articles along the way that might be of interest to you, and I hope that you will enjoy reading them.

The link to the exhibition "Castle Garden and Ellis Island: Ports of Immigration" is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-ellisisland.htm. Just click on the "enter" link at the bottom of the first page, and subsequently, the "next" link at the end of each page's text.

New Exhibition: "HIAS: The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society"

More for you at the ever-expanding Museum of Family History.

Many Jewish immigrants who entered countries such as the United States sought assistance upon their immigration, e.g. food, housing, etc. Aid societies, such as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, founded by Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City in 1881, often had a representative stationed at the major ports of entry, waiting to help each and every immigrant they could. The founding of HIAS was in response to the huge wave of immigration that occurred following the assassination of the Russian Czar Alexander II in 1881 and the subsequent pogroms. Many Jews were forced to flee Russia and immigrate to the United States, the majority entering via the port of New York. There, HIAS would provide food and shelter to the new immigrant, and try to find them a job. In 1911, HIAS even provided a kosher kitchen at Ellis Island and fed more than half a million meals between 1925 and 1952.

............................................................................................

I am the immigrant.
Since the dawn of creation my restless feet have beaten new paths across the earth.
My uneasy bark has tossed on all seas.
My wanderlust was born of the craving for more liberty and a better wage for the sweat of my face.
I looked towards the United States with eyes kindled by the fire of ambition and heart quickened with newborn hope....

-- from the book "The Immigrant: An Asset and a Liability," by Frederick J. Haskin, an excerpt from the poem "The Immigrant."

.............................................................................................

In this exhibition you can read about HIAS cir 1913, its objectives and its accomplishments. You can also read some of the content that appeared in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times on December 28, 1913, as it appealed to the public for financial support.

You will also find an example of a HIAS immigration card which was filled out by HIAS officers and the immigrant when they first arrived in the United States. In this page from the Museum of Family History's ERC (Education and Research Center), you can learn what information can be gleaned from such cards.

To access this exhibition, please visit www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-hias.htm and follow the "next" links at the bottom of each web page.