Emigration - Immigration

Arrival at Jamestown

The word, emigration, is defined by the Library of Congress as, the act of leaving one’s country to live somewhere else.  It may also be defined as, the act of moving from one country to another with the intent of not returning.

Emigration is to be distinguished from the word, expatriation, which means, the abandonment of one’s country and the renunciation of one’s citizenship in that country.

 In many instances expatriation is a result or the consequences of emigration because emigration denotes the removal of a person and that person’s property to another country.  Sometimes, emigration is  used in reference to the removal of a person from one section to another section of the same country.

 Immigrant is normally defined as the person who emigrates or enters another country with the intent of becoming a permanent resident of that nation.
  

Jamestown Island - May 2007 - 400th Anniversary 

 The U.S. Federal Government did not require captains or masters of vessels to present a passenger list to U.S. officials before January 1, 1820.  The lists that remain for the period before 1820 are varied in content. They range from lists that contain names only to those citing a person's full name, age, and country of origin.
There were approximately 650,000 individuals of all nationalities who arrived in America prior to 1820.  They were predominately English and Welsh with smaller numbers of German, Irish, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, French, Spanish, African, and other nationalities. These folk [immigrants] tended to settle in the eastern, middle-Atlantic, and southern states.

There were over ten million immigrants that arrived from northern Europe, the British Isles, and Scandinavia between 1820 and 1880. Starting in the 1840’s and 1850’s there was a large increase in the number of immigrants from both Germany and Ireland.  Some of these folk settled in large eastern and mid-western cities, but most migrated to the mid-west and western parts of our nation.

More than twenty-five million immigrants, mainly from southern and eastern Europe came to America during the period between 1880 and 1920. Many of these individuals came from Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and England. Many of these folk settled in the larger cities, including New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Castle Garden [now Castle Clinton] was America's first immigrant receiving center.  From the 1^st of August 1855 it welcomed more than eight million immigrants that arrived in the state of New York before it was closed on the 18^th of April 1890. Castle Garden was succeeded by Ellis Island in 1892.

Ellis Island 1905

Ellis Island opened in 1892 as a federal immigration station, a great change was taking place in immigration to the United States. Immigrants poured in from southern and eastern Europe as arrivals from northern and western Europe–Germany, Ireland, Britain and the Scandinavian countries–slowed. Jews escaping from political and economic oppression in czarist Russia and Eastern Europe [in 1910 some 484,000 arrived] and Italians escaping poverty in their country. There were also Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks and Greeks, along with non-Europeans from Syria, Turkey and Armenia who all left their homes in the Old World due to war, drought, famine and religious persecution.  All hoped for greater opportunity in the New World. One such person was the composer, Irving Berlin who arrived in 1893.  We all remember at least a few of the many songs that  Irving Berlin contributed to our nation's musical heritage  including: God Bless America, Easter Parade and White Christmas. 

Ellis Island officially closed in 1954.  It has been estimated that forty per cent of all current citizens of the United States can trace at least one ancestor who arrived in America via Ellis Island. Ellis Island opened to the public in 1976. Now, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in the restored Main Arrivals Hall may be toured and folk may trace their ancestors through millions of immigrant arrival records made available to the public in 2001.

Custom Passengers Lists were kept by the Customs Department from 1820 - 1902.  The Immigration and Naturalization Service started keeping records in 1883.  These records are  referred to as Immigration Passenger Lists.