On this day in 1907 the U.S. immigration center on Ellis Island received the most immigrants in its history. Specifically, in that one day 11,747 immigrants arrived in the United States. It was a time when people from Europe went to the U.S. in large numbers, seeking a better future. Ellis Island was by far the most important immigrant station in the entire history of the United States. This small island of 11.1 hectares is located in New York, southwest of Manhattan (not far from the Statue of Liberty). Immigrants into the U.S. landed at Ellis Island in order to be inspected and entered into the record books.
It was calculated that a total of approximately 12,000,000 immigrants passed through Ellis Island. Each of them was examined in case that he or she carries a disease. Because of such large numbers of immigrants, the medical examination lasted for only six seconds. The amount of money that the immigrants carried was also controlled. Unfortunately, they were mostly poor people, because the average amount they carried was reportedly between 18 and 25 dollars.
The highpoint of immigration was the above-mentioned year of 1907, when as many as 1,004,756 immigrants passed through Ellis Island. Only a portion of immigrants stayed in New York, while most of them went on to other parts of the United States. It is an incredible fact that as many as 100 million Americans, about one-third of the United States population, have an ancestor who passed through Ellis Island. Some of the immigrants who passed through there became famous later in their lives, including Cary Grant, Bela Lugosi, Rudolph Valentino, Frank Capra, Johnny Weissmuller, or the Trapp family (from musical “The Sound of Music”).
