Post Scripts: Ellis Island

Ellis Island, through which many foreign citizens passed before entering on U.S. soil, has an interesting history. Originally built in 1818 as an arsenal and a fort, it was closed in 1954 and placed on the government’s excess property list. Deteriorating in the fierce New York harbor winters, the island was made a part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, then opened to tourists in 1976.

Private citizens then mounted a campaign to preserve the Island in one of the most ambitious restoration projects in American history. The main building was restored where today visitors can visit the Ellis Island Museum, dedicated to commemorating immigrants’ stories of courage and rejection. It tells the story of the largest human migration in modern history.

With genealogy so popular today, over 100 million Americans have started tracing their family heritage to find out more about who they were and where they came from. In 1985 the Statue of Liberty Foundation asked The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to assist in making the immigrant records of Ellis Island more accessible to the public. The church has long been recognized for its involvement in collecting and preserving historical data.

The Foundation asked the church if it would take on the enormous task of assembling data from ship manifests and Island Records and develop a searchable computer database. Since this effort began eight years ago, about 5.6 million man-hours have been donated by all faiths alongside members of the Saints. So far workers have extracted, transcribed and verified 3,685 microfilms containing over 25 million entries onto microfilm.

The biggest hurdles were the language and penmanship. With a wide variety of names, spelling and pronunciations, along with 100-year-old hand-written letters, the manifests were very difficult to read. So far, more than 24 million names have been recorded. For those interested in immigrant records, they may write The National Archives in Washington, D.C., or the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. During its peak years, 1892-1924, Ellis Island received thousands of immigrants a day. The peak day was April 17, 1907.

It just so happens that my wife’s family came from Germany early in this century. Members of the family have been to Ellis Island and used the service available to compile family history. The Ellis Island research service includes a newly-designed computer system including data completed by the church. This has been a source of great satisfaction to Weide family on their father’s side, and to the Bleich family on their mother’s side.

Once your ancestors are located in the records you can add documents to your family history, including computer printouts. From these records you can obtain immigrants given and surname, gender, age, marital status, port of origin, nationality, arrival date, last residence, and line numbers of the original manifest. Even stowaways are included and sometimes the name of the ship Today more than 110 million, or 40 percent of living Americans can trace their roots to ancestors who came to America through Ellis Island.

The Church is continuing their family record project, Eventually all this data will become available on the Internet for those unable to get to New York and Ellis Island. The website (I’m not sure its ready yet) will be www.FamilySearch.org. I hope this information is helpful. It’s good to know that Ellis Island joins the Statue of Liberty as symbols of freedom.