The Loves of Ellis Island: Immigrant Reunions and Hardships at the Gateway to America (1909)

📌 Mabel Potter Daggett’s poignant account of Ellis Island explores the emotional and human aspects of immigration in the early 20th century. Read about reunions, hardships, and the enduring hope of those seeking a better life in America.

The Loves of Ellis Island (1909)

Relevance to Immigration Studies

Mabel Potter Daggett’s “The Loves of Ellis Island” (1909) provides a deeply emotional portrayal of the immigrant experience at Ellis Island, emphasizing the human aspects of migration that are often overshadowed by bureaucratic processes.

This article holds significant relevance for teachers, students, genealogists, historians, and anyone studying immigration, as it highlights the personal struggles, emotional reunions, and the complexity of identity and belonging experienced by immigrants as they passed through Ellis Island.

For historians and genealogists, this work offers insight into the daily lives of immigrants in the early 20th century. For educators, it provides a vivid narrative that can help students better understand the human side of immigration—the emotional labor of separation, the optimism, and the hardships faced by newcomers.

The story of love and separation at Ellis Island is one that transcends historical time and remains highly relevant in today’s global context of migration.

Two Young Dutch Mothers, Their Babies in Swaddling Clothes, On the Roof of Ellis Island. Home Mission Monthly, August 1901. GGA Image ID # 14f7c27a80

In This Flood-Tide of Foreign Humanity, One May Discover the Real Pulsing Motif that Throbs through Human Life

By Mabel Potter Daggett

GREAT artists have tried to paint it. Great poets have sung it. You may see the fundamental pulsing motif that throbs human life at the Place of Tears and Kisses, a metaphor for the emotional turmoil and the hope that immigrants experience. A gong has sounded twice.

A tremulous movement of the American flag, a symbol of hope and opportunity, is suspended across the great hall. Now, beneath its folds, a long line is struggling from the sea and the steerage, drawn by the promise of a new life.

It is another shipload, another chapter in the journey of these brave souls, seeking admission to the American shore. They pass in review at this threshold of the continent out in New York Bay. Government inspectors look them over to see if they are fit, but their journey is a testament to the human spirit.

Immigrants Undergo Medical Examination at Ellis Island ca. 1908 (1902-1913). Photograph by Edwin Levick from the William Williams Collection. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, New York Public Library. NYPL # 416754. GGA Image ID # 14ea9ea1e3

Where a white towel hangs on the wall, doctors examine their eyes or tongues and wipe their fingers for the next. Down at the end of the row, they must give their personal history. Are they anarchists, paupers, or criminals? No.

Then, a small iron gate swings quickly outward. The inspection proceeds without protest. Not in a day or a generation did these people learn their respect for authority. They know a brass badge when they see it, and they are coming along in droves.

Almost akin to dumb, driven beasts, they seem to you looking down from the visitors' gallery. Many are small and stunted. Mostly, their lives have been spent bearing burdens. In the furrowed faces are written hardship and toil.

But wait. In their hearts is something more. Beneath a peasant's coat, you may find the same divine spark that links you to immortality.

When the immigrant lifted his eyes in hope toward his promised land of better fortune, there was that which made the pursuit of fortune worthwhile.

Lacking it, men and women of many more material possessions than the bundle slung over yonder traveler's shoulder have asked of the universe a "why" that has echoed back from an empty void.

In The Loves of Ellis Island, you may find a theme that answers the eternal question of existence. You shall see the immigrants laugh and cry. Nothing more matters much.

After many winding passageways, they have come to the department marked by the sign on the wall, the "Discharging Division." No name, that, for a place where the world's greatest wonder flashes forth before your eyes. One would speak only words that are soft and sweet here.

There is a stone floor, tall windows admitting gray light, and a long desk at which inspectors sit on high stools. Behind, in a compartment partitioned off with latticed wire, are immigrants passed as satisfactory for admission to the United States. They are waiting to be called for.

Their friends came by ferryboat from the Battery. It had just arrived outside with an eager throng. On the way over, utter strangers smiled into each other's faces and, in many alien accents, spoke together a common joy.

"Since last night when I got the telegram, it has seemed also like a year that I have waited." "You have never come for anyone before?

I have already taken out five, and I will show you where to go." "My breakfast, I could not eat at all. I was so glad." "Not in seven years have I seen her, but I shall know her! I shall know her!"

So, talking excitedly, they reach the gray-lighted room. They move in line before the high desk to make applications, each for his own. As they enter, the latticed cage thrills with anticipation. The folk song of a far homeland crooning in a corner hushes. Inspectors look them over quietly.

A child crying stops suddenly to find out what is stirring its elders. The people crowd toward the latticework. They press their faces close to peer through. Outside, just beyond reach, are dear ones whom the years and the ocean have rolled between.

As they recognize relatives, there is an exclamation, a cry in a foreign tongue. They gesticulate. They call across the intervening space. They throw up hats. They wave handkerchiefs. And the line beyond, in more subdued agitation, waves back.

The door is locked. It has to be. In their impatience, some are even shaking the wire lattice. Some lean against it, their heads bowed on their arms in tears. In the meantime, the red tape of the Discharging Division of the Immigration Service of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor measures off slowly, indeed,

She has no money and no friends, so she will have to return safely. The government keeps these new arrivals. It must be sure of their destination before surrendering them, particularly women and children. Uncle Sam does not mean to let girls go wrong.

Those who say they are relatives must prove it. "What is this woman to you?" is asked searchingly. The answers to all questions of family history must match the information on the immigrant's landing card.

Satisfied that all is well, the inspector removes his stool and turns the lock on the latticed door. We may see with him the simple life and its warm heart.

"Katrina Wurtemberger," he calls. A smiling woman in a woolen dress and heavy shoes pushes past the rest, a brood of nine about her, little girls with plaid dresses and tightly braided yellow hair, little boys in long trousers and queer caps.

The man who has rushed toward them is a homesteader from the Canadian Northwest, his honest German face aglow with joy at claiming his own. They meet at the pillar that all Ellis Island calls the "Kissing Post."

He gathers them to his heart, reaching out after the mother and all the rest his arms can hold. “Meine liebchen, meine liebchen,” he says over and over. And he hugs them together, and he hugs them separately until an attendant good-naturedly admonishes, "Move on."

The door has clicked several times, and more are coming toward the Kissing Post. Bridget Muldoon, in a black shawl and a gingham apron, lays her old head on her daughter's shoulder. The daughter, fashionably attired, a buyer for a New York department store, holds the shawled figure close and kisses the wrinkled face tenderly.

Simon Kapoletsky drops a significant bundle on the floor to throw his arms about a young man from the East Side. They embrace repeatedly as the old man murmurs brokenly in Yiddish, "My boy, my boy!"
Zofia Kaceluk's kerchiefed head is bowed low as she frantically kisses the hand that would draw her closer.

"Is this your sister?" the inspector asked her. Poor Zofia hardly knew for she wondered what this fine, grand young lady Joseffa had become, wearing kid gloves and a hat with a soft feather. Josefa, who sent the money for her passage, had been here for two years.

She works as a domestic and earns twenty-five dollars a month. As they go through the door labeled "New York," she unties the paper parcel she carries. Before they reach the ferryboat, Zofia's peasant head-dress disappears, and she is wearing her first hat uneasily but proudly. No street gamin of the metropolis shall call "greenery" after Joseffa's sister.

Terezia Petrona, whose aunt has asked for her, is not getting through quickly. She is sixteen and very pretty.

Accompanying the aunt, a young man telegraphs right over the inspector's head with ardent glances that Terezia knows how to answer. "I don't like the fellow's looks," the inspector objects. How do I know what he wants of the girl?"

Her aunt is protesting in distress, and Terezia's dark eyes are suffused with tears behind the lattice. Up comes the chief inspector with gray-haired wisdom. "Tut, tut!" he says to the careful younger man. "Have a little faith in human nature. Suppose the boy is her sweetheart. That's no crime. Let the girl go."

"On your responsibility then, sir," answers the other disapprovingly. Terezia flies to her aunt's arms. The young man looks on hungrily. To him, she shyly gives her hand. Then she stoops for her bundle. She brought it up from the ship and balanced gracefully on her head.

With an exclamation, he reaches beyond her. He is good-looking and well-dressed. In their country, men do not carry women's burdens.

The bundle is large and blue. But he picks it up and leads the way to New York. It is all right. He indeed loves her.

Detained Hungarian Immigrants at Ellis Island, Early 1900s. GGA Image ID # 21e77500f8

In the latticed waiting room, another pair of lovers talk. She is ticketed "to her intended husband." They have let him through to see her. And now she hesitates. She has changed her mind. But Jan paid for her passage from Hungary, where they grew up together.

He holds her hand and talks eagerly. She stares at the wall. She drops her eyes and lifts them coquettishly. Now, she shakes her head. "What are they saying?" I ask an interpreter. "Oh," he tells me, "the boy keeps asking her, "When? When ?" and she says, "Not yet. Maybe in six months.'"

This is all he can get her to say. "Be a good girl," he tells her as he sadly goes away. And into her hand, he has slipped ten cents, with which she afterward buys two red apples. The Hungarian Society will find her a position as a domestic. Someday, when she gets lonely enough, she will write Jan to come and see her.

Katarzyna Tobay, wide-waisted and red-cheeked, is given to her husband, who has been here a year. They meet with great happiness shining in their eyes, and he kisses her almost reverently. Then she opens the bundle she carries so close to her breast.

SHE shows him something soft, wonderful, and pink he has never seen before. With a hard-brown finger, he touches it gently as if it might break. She says something in Magyar, and he leans and kisses his son.

Angelica Ferrante, in a lavender gown and a white silk scarf over her black hair, is standing hand in hand with Gaetano Lucchio. They want to be married.

They are led to Father Moretto's room in the missionary's room, who will take them to New York in the afternoon and marry them in the little chapel at the house of San Raffael on Charlton Street.

It is the home maintained for assisting Italian immigrants, and Father Moretto paroles the Italians in need of protection. There was Clementina Rosa, who came one day in her bridal gown, and no one was waiting at the Kissing Post.

From her pockets, she produced a folded paper, the "promissory matrimonio" of Battista Maiorca. He probably had not received the letter announcing her arrival. Father Moretto took her to the house of San Raffael, and there, Battista came for her.

"Let me have the girl," he said. "I will marry her by a civil ceremony."

"No," answered the priest, "to you, as to her, a marriage except by the Church would be no marriage at all."

"Well, let her come with me while I buy her a hat," he urged.

"No," said the priest, looking him entirely in the face until his shifting eyes fell. The girl spoke entreatingly to the man, touching his arm. But he wrenched away, the door slammed, and he was gone.

Father Moretto stroked her dark head soothingly when she burst into tears, saying, "There, there, my daughter. I have cared for two thousand other girls in the last three years. I can take care of you."

In the little chapel in the front room, the candles burned dimly, and the white saints looked down from their niches in the wall. A home was found for Clementina with a widow and her two daughters.

With them, she earns a living making flowers. Now and then, as she looks out over the New York rooftops, she crosses herself and thanks God and Father Moretto, who kept her safe from harm.

For Father Moretto, the adoration of his people manifests as he moves among them on Ellis Island. Not every immigrant may pass out from the Place of Tears and Kisses on the day of his arrival.

Some are detained for weeks pending the settlement of a question about their landing. Missionaries of their nationality visit them daily. And it means much to the alien among strangers to pour out in his tongue the story he has tried so hard to express through interpreters.

All the missionaries help, but none so radiates hope and humanity as Father Moretto when he comes to speak with the Italians. He is a young man with a smiling, sunny face. As he goes through now, the people would kiss his feet, only he laughs and will not let them.

A girl has lost her railroad ticket, and he tells her not to cry and that he will find her uncle for her. An older woman wants a letter written to her son in the West, and he will do it gladly. A woman kneeling by the wooden bench in one corner is moaning and praying. "She has been taking on terrible," the matron of the waiting room tells him. All night, she was saying Ave Maria and Pater posters.

As she and her three children passed yesterday in review before the inspectors, a doctor marked with blue chalk on the sleeve of her small Lorenzo, aged seven.

And at once, they were turned aside from the regular line. Lorenzo had measles and had to be sent to a hospital in Brooklyn, and she had to wait with the other children until he got well. The interpreter told her. But she only knew that they were taking her child away.

"He will die," she shrieked. Just as the matron now tells the priest, she "took on terrible." He goes to the praying woman and rests a hand gently on her shoulder. She lifts a haggard face and eyes red with weeping. He tells her how it has to be in soft, low Italian syllables.

Her case is not nearly as bad as that of another woman, who sits disconsolate over by the window, whose child has the dread trachoma and must, therefore, be deported. Lorenzo should be with the nurses and doctors.

Little by little, the woman's weeping ceases, and she is calm. When the priest gently disengages the hand she is covering with kisses, she is reconciled. While she stays, she will be well taken care of. The accommodations the Government provided are better than any to which she has been accustomed.

In the velvet-carpeted office upstairs for several years sat a man to whom no detail of the comfort of the people in his keeping was too trivial for personal supervision. Why, the Government one day laundered a peasant woman's apron carelessly so that the red embroidered border ran into the blue.

She felt as badly as might some fine lady whose Paris gown should be spoiled in dry cleaning. He, the Commissioner of Immigration, heard about it and went to the laundry. Now, all the aprons come through without fading.

He, too, had the benches put in the long aisles where the people have to wait. Long ago, this man himself, who afterward was made the guard for the gateway of a continent, came through the lines, an immigrant boy with fifty cents in his pocket on his way to work in the coal mines of Iowa.

So even yet, he knows. And there is always in his heart a brooding tenderness for the alien. It looks from his eyes at the full-length oil painting in the reception room, along with the portraits of other government officials.

Beneath that picture, a Hungarian mother and her baby sat as I passed through to talk with Commissioner Watchorn. She had never seen an upholstered chair before, and she was sitting awkwardly on the edge of this one, in toilsome contrast to the handsome room.

She was standing in the corridor outside, waiting with a group of others before one of the numerous offices for some special examination that her case required. The commissioner, happening to see her, himself ushered her in.

In his private office, we may now see how he has always felt about the people of Ellis Island. One of the cases chalk marked out of the regular lines has been referred to him. Two travelers stand before him, Constantino Stavros and a little boy, Antonios Kopelos.

Many little Greek boys have been stolen and worked as bootblacks under the padrone system. It was feared this might be such a case, though the man strenuously asserted he was bringing Antonios to his father.

Even when the father had been sent for from Chicago, there had been doubt because he hadn't told things through the interpreter just as small Antonios had. And those who sat in judgment, it happened, hadn't seen the man daily on the ferry boat with the hungry, pleading look in his eyes.

"Come here, Antonios," says the commissioner kindly, drawing the boy between his knees. At the same time, he orders his secretary to read the case to him. "Bring in the other man," then he says. "Now Antonios," he asks, "which is your father?"

The boy nods with a smile toward the man, struggling to keep back the tears plaguing his cheeks. "Suppose you shake hands with your father, Antonios," says the commissioner, releasing him.

With a bound, the child throws himself into the outstretched arms that close tightly about him. A mighty sobbing shakes the frame of the man bending above him. "There isn't any doubt where that boy belongs," says the commissioner, using his handkerchief vigorously. "I order him admitted."

On the walls of the great receiving station, notices reading "Immigrants must be treated with kindness and consideration" are posted here and there.

It was put there by Robert Watchorn.

And this order works. Come into the Board of Special Inquiry, where the cases are detained for more extended examination than the inspectors in the line can give.

There is a long, polished table before which four men sit to judge the merits of the case through the interpreter's information. The waiting people are in rows on the benches.

An Italian woman, Giuseppe La Rocco, is called to the tribunal's bar with her three children. She is gathering them up, and little Rosina is asleep. "Never mind," says the chairman of the board kindly, "do not wake her."

Small Pasquale, tied up in a brown shawl, trudges forward with his mother. As they begin to question her, the baby in her arms commences to cry. Another board member hunts for a cough drop in his pocket and dexterously administers it as the baby's mouth opens for a loud scream.

The woman is a widow, and it develops. She has no money, and the immigration authorities must be assured of support for her and the children. She has brothers. They have been sent for and are now in the witness room. They come in, three prosperous Italians.

Two are painters, and one is a macaroni manufacturer who throws his card upon the table. After the usual formula, they smile as they readily promise that their sister shall not become a public charge. She is committed to their care. Each kisses her tenderly.

The macaroni manufacturer gathers the little niece sleeping on the bench in his arms, and the happy family party departs for the home in the Bronx.

Next comes Moses Rolfsky, a bookbinder from Russia, and his wife, Sarah. His long beard is white, and her shoulders are bent. "I come to America to work at my trade," he says. "In Russia, I have been through riots and persecution. I was robbed on the street. They took three hundred dollars from me. They broke all my instruments."

"How do you know you can get work in America?" the board chairman asked. The hopeful reply was, "Everybody gets work in America. "

But there must be more than the older man's hope to guarantee the couple's future. From the witness room, their son, Simon, an East Side tailor, is called. He offers bonds for their support. "And you will give your parents a home?" he is asked.

His six-room flat home already teems with a family of thirteen. Still, he answers cordially, "Sure," as he puts an arm around his mother and reaches a hand to his father. It is a habit of an East Side home always to have room for more.

"Our cousin from Russia is coming" is cause enough to make up another bed on the floor. "Why, he is our kinsman."

Blood ties are close among all Oriental people. Next, there is Musa Beshada. He is only fourteen, and unless the board knows he will make a living or someone will make it for him, he will have to be excluded.

"Why, Musa, have you come so far alone to seek your fortune?" asks the chairman, and Musa says: "At home, a worm eats all the crops. Nothing grew last year that did not fail. Many people in my village are starving.

There are my aged grandparents, my mother, and five children. I have come to America to my uncle so that I may work and send money back to them." The uncle, a Syrian peddler who travels through small towns of New York State with a pack on his back, is called in.

Will he look after his nephew and provide for him? Unhesitatingly, he answers in the affirmative and takes the boy by the hand.

"Of course, he would," comments the Syrian interpreter with pride. "In my country, a nephew is as dear as a son. The blood of his brother flows in that boy's veins. He bears the family name. It is a sacred duty for him to be loved by his uncle."

There is summoned Anna Czorpita. She wears a flowered kerchief over her fair hair and stands with her hands crossed one over the other. Her blue eyes survey the faces of the four men before her, and her eyelids flutter.

"Tell her not to be frightened," the board chairman tells the interpreter. Then, they take her testimony. She is seventeen, an Austrian peasant girl traveling alone.

She is going to her betrothed husband.

HE IS Leopold Adarczyk, in Pittsburg. Why do they not let her proceed on her journey? Of course, she has been told the reason before, but she has not understood. They must know who Leopold is and whether he will be able to support her.

So they sent him to Pittsburg to come and get her. They called him from the outer room. A look of glad surprise flashed on her face at the sight of him. He started eagerly toward her, but an attendant brought him up before the board instead.

They question him.

"You intend to make Anna your wife?"

"Yes."

"What do you do for a living?"

"I am a musician."

"How much do you earn?"

"Fifteen dollars a week, and it is to be. I have the promise of a place in the orchestra at the opera house." From his pocket protrudes one end of a flute.

"Let us hear if you can play," suggests Leopold complies.

The notes of an Austrian love song fill the air. At first, the player is a trifle self-conscious. But as his music throbs and thrills through the room, his heart gets in rhythm with it. His eyes are on the fair-haired girl, and all the board is forgotten.

They are sitting in rapt attention, and as the last measure dies away, the chairman says warmly, "My! But that makes me young again. I guess you can have your girl." Outside the door, the Austrian missionary waits to marry them.

There is one more case. Not even the board, who are used to life as it passes by their table, have wanted to come to it.

A woman sits alone on the rearmost bench. They call her, and she comes forward. Before them, a record the doctors furnished states a medical fact. In answer to the question that they are obliged, according to form, to ask her, she confirms it. "You are coming to your husband?" they continue.

"Yes," she says. "And you say he has been in America for two years, and you have never seen him during that time?" "Yes," she answers in a low voice, realizing the meaning of the admission.

"Bring in the husband," the chairman slowly orders. Every board member looks out of the window at the sea, and the clock ticks loudly.

The interpreter is now repeating it. In eager anticipation, a young man enters. He has come in answer to the postal card from the immigration authorities announcing that his wife is here.

"This woman is your wife?" asks the chairman. "Yes." "You paid her passage over?" "Yes, I sent her the money. I wrote to her many times. I have a home ready."

He is a window cleaner, Jean Dupron by name. He earns ten dollars a week and has one hundred dollars in the bank.

"We must tell him, gentlemen," says the chairman as if soliciting the support of the rest in performing his duty.

"We regret to inform you," he begins, "that your wife comes here. " He then reads the rest of the medical record.

The woman's face flushes and she hangs her head. The man's face is a study. It might have been graven from stone.

"Shall I tell him again?" asks the interpreter. "I guess you'll have to," the chairman says. And they repeat the statement. There is a quiver of his shoulders as if under the lash of a whip.

"Knowing the fact, do you still wish to take your wife?" If he renounces her, she must be deported.

There is silence for a moment and a quick intaking of the man's breath. Then he answers, "Yes." All the time, he has not looked at the woman.

"You better take time to consider it. We will give you ten minutes to confer with your wife," says the chairman, waving him toward the bench where she sits.

As the man turns, the woman with a sob throws herself on his breast and kisses his lips and his cheeks. He submits passively, looking into her poor, weak, pretty face with eyes that, for the rest of his life, will mirror something of this moment's anguish. They sit down to talk. He bows his head in his hands.

She strokes his coat sleeve entreatingly. In the Austrian dialect, she tells him the story. The board turns its back. They try to talk about the steamship arrivals and the weather, and they note the mist coming up over the sea.

At length, they look at the clock. "Call them up," the interpreter is ordered.

And they come, the man's arm now about the woman's waist. He is not more than twenty-five, but his face is suddenly old. Yet, through the lines of pain are lines of strength. "I will take her," he says.

"Swear him," the interpreter is directed. The man raises his right hand.

"Do you promise to care for her, cherish her, and stand in the place of a father to her child?" Outside, the fog bells on the boats are tolling dismally.

"I do," he answers solemnly.

"Then this alien is admitted," announces the Board. And a tragedy is done and begun. Jean Dupron, the window cleaner, goes out with his wife. The chairman, wiping his glasses, murmurs, "Greater love hath no man shown."

And day in and day out, the lines at Ellis Island are moving. There is the quiver of the trembling lip, the lifted eyelid's glance, the touch of the hand, the swift embrace. Why, for this, the immigrant will suffer and endure and live. He may not live so high intellectually as some who have scaled the heights ahead.

The treadmill of existence is necessarily placed against the base of the social pyramid, where some beams of light never penetrate. But he lives as deep as the wells of human affection, as wide as the waves of human sympathy.

You will know this once you have stood at the Place of Tears and Kisses. Here, you have seen the immigrant's soul unfold. He is no longer dull, plodding, or stupid. Even sometimes, before you, he is suddenly glorified in the image of God in which he was made.

Kissing Gates of America — Friend Greeting Emigrant Just Discharged. The Maltine Company, Quarantine Sketches, 1902. GGA Image ID # 14af1b0021

The Kissing-Post

The boats steam up through the Narrows into New York harbor toward the welcoming statue that symbolizes the spirit of our country. And the new pilgrims—pilgrims who are ignorant, poorly nurtured, and badly clothed— enter the land of the free. And the gateway is called Ellis Island.

A wonderful system rules at this gateway. And smoothly, steadily, all the time, the wheels keep rolling on, admitting the right ones, deporting the impossible kind, and helping the newcomer find a home and a family.

"I am going to let you see the immigrants claimed by their friends," said the superintendent as he guided us through a series of apartments, dormitories, baggage rooms, resting rooms, and ticket exchanges.

Swiftly, he led us to a hallway divided into two parts. In one corner, the pilgrims waited; in another, their families were showing the necessary credentials. Smilingly, the superintendent turned toward us.

"Do you see that post at the doorway?" he asked, and as we glanced at it, he said, "Some call it the kissing post. It is there that the long-separated families meet." And then we saw that he spoke the truth.

For, while he was talking, an excited Neapolitan in American clothes ran out of the tiny gate. At the foot of the kissing post, his family met him—a young wife and two tiny children.

And there they were reunited—at the gateway of our land! The Gateway of Liberty had become their gate of Thanksgiving. —Christian Herald.

Daggett, Mabel Potter, “The Loves of Ellis Island,” in The Delineator, New York: The Butterick Publishing Company, Vol. LXXIV, No. 3, September 1909, p. 205, 222, 226, 228.

Key Highlights and Engaging Content

One of the most compelling sections of this article is the Kissing Post—a symbolic and literal point where families reunited after long separations. This vivid scene represents not only the joy of arrival but also the hardships endured by families who have been apart for years. The article’s inclusion of this moment serves as a poignant reminder of the human connections that are at the heart of immigration.

The images included further enhance the emotional depth of the piece. The photograph “Two Young Dutch Mothers, Their Babies in Swaddling Clothes, On the Roof of Ellis Island,” visually represents the innocence and hopefulness that accompanied the arrival of many immigrants. These images give a face to the abstract concept of immigration and invite readers to connect with the individual experiences of these families.

Additionally, the description of the medical examinations immigrants underwent, and the detailed portrayal of “Immigrants Undergo Medical Examination at Ellis Island,” underscore the rigorous and often dehumanizing processes immigrants had to face, yet they also reflect the government's attempt to screen for potential public health risks.

Educational and Historical Insights

This article provides both emotional and historical insights into the immigrant experience. Through detailed personal stories, Daggett sheds light on the tensions between hope and despair that defined the journey to America.

The scenes at Ellis Island—whether it’s the joy of family reunification or the anguish of separation—illustrate the broader social and political implications of immigration policies at the time.

For genealogists, this article offers a look into the kinds of personal details and family dynamics that shaped the lives of immigrants, which can be invaluable when researching family histories.

The struggles and sacrifices of the people at Ellis Island, depicted so vividly by Daggett, help humanize the raw statistics of immigration and offer genealogists a richer context for understanding the immigrant ancestors they may be researching.

For educators, this narrative is a useful tool to teach students about immigration policies, social integration, and the impact of such policies on individual lives.

It’s an excellent resource for discussing the intersection of personal narratives with broader historical movements and the ways that immigration shapes national identity.

Final Thoughts

“The Loves of Ellis Island” is a deeply moving and evocative piece of writing that provides a unique lens through which we can examine the immigrant experience.

Mabel Potter Daggett’s empathetic narrative, combined with its rich visual imagery, creates an unforgettable account of Ellis Island as both a place of bureaucratic procedure and human connection. It’s a reminder of the emotional, human side of immigration that often gets lost in the larger political discussions.

Through the stories of individuals—whether it’s a long-awaited reunion or a painful separation—Daggett brings to life the sacrifices, the hope, and the human cost behind the statistics of immigration. This piece continues to resonate today, reminding us of the ongoing challenges faced by immigrants around the world.

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