The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Browse through Ellis Island records online
This column was published May 13, 2001
I've become quite the office bore with my frequent exultations over the dazzling digital delights that the Information Age is putting in the hands of genealogists.
My grandfather, Charles C. Day, was operating a stage line between Lewiston, Idaho, and Anatone, Wash., when Model T cars began rolling off Henry Ford's assembly lines nearly a century ago. He sold his horses and bought several cars.
The Model T ushered in a new age. It quickly transformed the American culture and soon spread around the world. No one then could imagine where the transportation revolution would take society. Effects have been profound.
That's a dramatic analogy for the digital revolution that is altering our lives and society. Few are benefiting more than genealogists as information is being delivered from the four corners of the Earth to their very fingertips.
The latest dazzling digital offering is the Ellis Island immigration records, which became available on the Internet in April. I delayed writing about this phenomenal development because the Web site has been overburdened by eager genealogists.
Nothing speaks more eloquently of the popularity of ancestor hunting than the response when major new offerings such as this become available on the Web.
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation reported that 26 million people visited the Web site (www.ellisislandrecords.org) in its first 54 hours of operation. No one knows how many more tried to visit the site and were turned away by heavy traffic at the computer portals.
I didn't want you to be frustrated by rejection messages sent out by overloaded computers. The risk of being turned away is still significant, but not what it was earlier.
If you have trouble connecting, try between 10 and 11 p.m. Or, if you're a real night owl, try even later.
I gather the original rush is over. I connected on my first try one midafternoon last week.
Chances are great that you have ancestors who immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island. About 22 million immigrants streamed through that immigration center between 1892 and 1924.
It has been estimated that 40 percent of Americans today descend from one or more of those immigrants.
An estimated 100 million descendants of the Ellis Island immigrants live in the United States.
You can search some areas of the Ellis Island Records Web site for free, or get the whole thing for $45, which will make you a sustaining member of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.
Of course, Ellis Island was but one port of entry heavily used by immigrants. Other major ports of entry include Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco.
The Ellis Island Records were extracted and transcribed in digital form by members of the Mormon church who began their work in 1993 and finished last year.
About 12,000 volunteers from 2,700 congregations in the United States and Canada donated about 5.6 million hours to the project and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints devoted 100 full-time volunteers to work on the project.
The digital records have been shared with the National Park Service and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc.
What will you find on the records?
Traveler names, name of vessel, ports of departure, ports of arrival and dates of arrival, age, gender, marital status, nationality, relative or friend outside the United States, relative inside the United States, exact birth date and place of birth.
The most frequently listed departure ports were in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Finland, England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Newfoundland, Germany and Poland.