At Ellis Island, a central pillar stands just beyond the great Registry Room, the last hall through which immigrants passed as they moved through the final exhausting stages of their formal entrance into the United States.

It was near this post that millions of immigrants between 1892 and 1924 greeted their family and friends. Excited family members anxiously came to welcome the weary travelers to their new home and their new country.

Watching countless families reunite in emotional embraces, the staff at Ellis Island eventually named the central pillar around which such joyful reunions occurred the Kissing Post. It remains a fitting title, for that same Kissing Post is now the pillar that supports the home of the new American Family Immigration History Center. As of April 2001, visitors to the Center once again are able to pass this post, but now they are seeking to connect with their past and perpetuate respect for relatives who passed through the historic facility a century or more ago.

The Center is host to dozens of computers that provide access to an automated database of 22 million passenger records of the courageous individuals who came by ship to Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. For what is estimated to be 100 million living U.S. descendants of Ellis Island immigrants, these records provide an invaluable link to the lives of their ancestors. In a very real sense, those researchers sitting near the Kissing Post today will reunite generations of a family just as surely as their forebears did a hundred years ago.

Through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, numerous sponsors made the very gracious and generous contributions necessary to establish the American Family Immigration History Center and the database of Ellis Island immigration records.

The original immigrant records (ship manifests and passenger lists) were filmed and preserved by the National Archives on 3,685 rolls of microfilm. The filmed images were only as good as the original record, which were mostly handwritten, faded, and damaged, so reading the microfilm was difficult in many cases. Then, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through the efforts of 12,000 volunteers who donated over 5.6 million hours, extracted the names, dates, and other information from the microfilmed Ellis Island records to create the automated database at Ellis Island (and online). The volunteers followed a rigorous protocol of multiple checks to be sure information was captured correctly. The user-interface for both the Center and the Web site were created by The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation’s designers and developers.

Sitting at any given computer terminal at the Center, researchers will sense the feelings and sounds of Ellis Island in days long past. Graffiti on posts and walls are preserved and bespeak of the many decades when the Registry Hall rang with thousands of immigrant voices, most of whom are ancestors to an estimated 40 percent of Americans today.

Perhaps researchers will also be able to imagine the daily happenings at Ellis Island all those years ago. Wearing tags with their manifest numbers, weary Russians, Hungarians, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Swedes, and others climbed the stairs to the Registry Room. Immigration officials observed their ascent, always on the lookout for unusual strides or behavior that might indicate a physical or mental illness. Once in the huge Registry Room, immigrants were examined by doctors and others. Their papers were reviewed closely and many questions were asked of them.

But Ellis Island was much more than an examination station. If the Statue of Liberty symbolized freedom, Ellis Island embodied what it meant to meld a society out of nationalities, races, and religions. In the money exchange, dormitory, hospital, and examination areas, millions of immigrants experienced for the first time the ways of America. Then, with few dollars and sometimes equally few skills, these hopeful immigrants left Ellis Island and entered a country that was paved in the gold of opportunities. They took their dreams, hopes, fears, and reunited families and went out to build a place for themselves in America.

– Carol L. Clark, Ph.D.