Ellis Island Immigration History

Ellis Island served port of entry (1892- 1954); Boston (customs passenger lists through 1899); Boston (customs passenger lists through 1899); Philadelphia (customs passenger lists through 1899); Baltimore (customs passenger lists through 1891); and New Orleans through 1902)

Approximately, 40 percent of all current U.S. citizens can trace at least one of their ancestors to Ellis Island.

There were also several minor ports, e.g. Mobile, Al., Bath, Me., and Galveston, TX.

Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, some states started to pass their own immigration laws, which prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in 1875 that immigration was a federal responsibility.

However, the states continued to pass legislation on immigration entry. The Immigration

This society was a break-off of the Zionist movement. It wanted to relocate European Jews wherever they would be accepted; not exclusively Palestine. However, it closed its doors the very next year, although the organization, itself, continued to exist.

Jewish Emigration Society – Russia

The Jewish Emigration Society, 1909 operated from Kiev, with numerous offices in other centers of the Russian Empire. Its mission was regulation of Jewish emigration to redirect Jews outside the overpopulated large cites, (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago) to the southern and southwestern states of North America, where there seemed to be more economic opportunity. It assisted the Jewish emigrant from departure from Russia to establishing his new location in another country to the extent that they no longer need assistance.

Supported by well-to-do Jews, one of their experiments was immigration to Galveston, Texas. A middling success, in 1909 (773); 1910 (2,500); 1911; (1,400). By 1913, the threatened competition to nativists and the ‘strange’ religious rituals Jews exacted political retribution from the Texan

returned; for Jews, 7%.

Conditions in the Pale

Indeed, to control its Jews, the Tsars confined the Jews to the "Pale of the Settlement," twenty-five provinces of the Russian empire. To live outside, a Jew needed special permission from the authorities. (Some skilled workers, professional men and businessmen did receive (via purchase or bribery) such permission.

As a result of these stringencies, nearly 40% of Russian Jews lived on charity.

In October 1905, the Octobrists (those who opposed the Tsar), socialists and anarchists, attempted to take over the government when the Tsar’s troops were losing the Crimean war to the Turks. Many of these usurpers were Jews. Accordingly, after the Tsar retained control, the Jews received the brunt of reprisal.

The Pogrom of Kishinev

Kishinev pogroms of 1903 reduced the Jewish population in Bessarabia (now Moldova) between 1902 and 1905 from 60,000 to 53,243, many emigrating to the United States and the Americas. After the pogrom of 1905, while many more