Content area
Full Text
Imagine a sandbar, bereft of vegetation or habitation, some 2.7 acres in area at low tide, barely above sea level at high tide, and yet of critical significance to the lives, welfare and future status of some 12 million Americans.
The local Mohegans called it Kioshk (Gull Island) and the early Dutch settlers, impressed with the abundant beds of shellfish, referred to it as Oyster Island. In the years immediately preceding the Revolutionary War the barren island was used to hang captured pirates. And, accordingly, its name changed to Gibbet Island. Samuel Ellis purchased the island on January 20, 1785, and despite its varied use and successive ownerships during the ensuing centuries, the name Ellis Island has endured.
The army used the island as a defensive site and a place to store ordnance and ammunition during much of the 19th Century. In 1890, the House Committee on Immigration selected the site for the screening of newly arrived immigrants. President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed Ellis Island to be the first federal immigration station. (Until this date the surveillance and admission of immigrants were left to the individual states. Before the opening of the Ellis Island facility, New York had screened its newcomers at Castle Gardens in Battery Park, lower Manhattan.)
The sandy shoal called Ellis Island was substantially enlarged using tons of rock and soil excavated from underground Manhattan as the city constructed its extensive subway network. Thus Irish immigrants of a prior generation had shoveled out the...