Vera, Countess of Cathcart, arrived in the 1926 as a first-class passenger. As Irving Berlin, 25 years later, he wrote the first version of “God Bless America.” Next year came Israel Beilin, son of a Jewish cantor from Siberia. They produced 11 children and their descendants have Irish, German, Italian, Jewish and Scandinavian surnames. Three years later, she married another immigrant. Cannato navigates the crosscurrents of immigration since the 1700s, illustrating his tale generously with odd facts and highly readable stories.Īnnie Moore, 15 and from Ireland, was the first to arrive when the new station opened in 1892, escorting brothers Antony, 11 and Philip, 7. It’s also a reminder of a pressing contemporary issue: How to control immigrants when as many as 20 million may have slipped through present controls and are living in the United States illegally. Today, after 63 years as a testing station for would-be immigrants, Ellis Island has become a huge memorial for millions of Americans whose forebears successfully passed through it. They used to hang pirates on a small island in New York harbor, near where the Statue of Liberty now stands.
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