This article was originally featured in Explorica’s 2012 fall magazine. We’ll be sharing 20 life-changing travel experiences throughout the season. Transform your students’ lives (and maybe your own) with any of these exceptional educational travel experiences.
Fifteen-year-old Annie Moore was the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island in 1892. Four years earlier, her parents arrived through Manhattan’s Castle Garden, which was neither a castle nor a garden but an ill-reputed immigrant station. Imagine what it must’ve been like to travel for 12 days from her native Ireland on the SS Nevada under cramped and dank conditions. Sense her anticipation when stepping ashore at New York Harbor to reunite with her parents and start anew in America….
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As you wander Ellis Island, you’ll learn how over the next 62 years some 12 million immigrants followed in her wake, arriving from places as far flung as Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Germany. Because of this massive influx, historians hold Ellis Island as the one place that connects more Americans than any other in the country. So much so that today you’ll find over half of the U.S. population can trace its ancestry to at least one person who passed through its port. Every immigrant who traveled here was recorded on the ship’s manifest, so pore over documents at the Ellis Island Museum and try to spot a familiar name.
When taking the 30-minute ferry ride from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan to Ellis Island, close your eyes and imagine the smells, sights, and sounds that greeted Annie on these same waters more than 120 years earlier. Re-live her excitement as you see the Statue of Liberty, beacon of the “Land of Opportunity,” in the distance. Breathe a sigh of relief as you inhale the breezy air on deck, a dream of many who traveled for weeks on end in the squalid, dark ship’s hold. Think about how this rare respite carried a speck of hope towards the New World, no matter how cold or bitter the winds became.
Upon arrival at Ellis Island’s immigration station, ponder the throngs of people who climbed its steps under the gaze of eagle-eyed doctors looking for sickly immigrants to deport. Although you won’t see the countless rows of metal rails and benches that once lined the Great Hall, packing immigrants in like sardines, the abundance of photos and artifacts on display will help you capture their tiring wait for permission to enter the country.
Before you leave, stop by the kissing post. Marked by a plaque today, this post is a happy reminder of where new immigrants reunited with family members already settled in America. This might even be where Annie, herself, reunited with her parents. As you continue on to New York City, blow a kiss to Annie, whose bronze statue eagerly overlooks the Harbor, and dream of where your journey will take you next.
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