Ellis Island Essay
Schema della sezione
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In the greatest human migration in modern history, from 1892 to 1954 more than 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island and the Port of New York, more than the immigrants passing through all the other North American ports combined. The ship companies that transported these passengers kept detailed passenger lists, called ‘ship manifests,’ which have been transcribed into a vast electronic archive of nearly 65 million records on the Ellis Island website, which can be easily accessed at no cost in search of individuals who passed through the Port of New York from 1820 to 1957. Some records are more complete than others, with information about names, ages, dates of arrival, ship names and sometimes ship pictures and descriptions, ports of departure, nationalities, birthplaces, occupations, last residences, final destinations and more (information taken from the Ellis Island website).
Instructions: Go to the website of The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation www.ellisisland.org and register for free in order to look for family or friends’ names in the Passenger Search database.
Type in your family’s paternal and maternal surnames and start the search (to find all recorded immigrants with that name, you can ignore the request for first name, approximate year of birth and gender.). If you click on “refine search,” you can narrow down your search by specifying a particular “ethnicity” and even the name of the town or village of origin.
Finally, write a short essay (minimum 700 words, no maximum limit) presenting and analyzing the information that you find in your research. Essays should be typed and double spaced. Respect paragraph structure (indenting paragraphs) and include a clear introduction and conclusion. N.B. Do not plagiarize from the Ellis Island website or from other sources.
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