The Ellis Island Quiz Book

By Barry Moreno

A multiple-choice quiz that teaches you everything you need to know about the immigrant experience at America's "Golden Door."

Have you ever wondered what it was like to journey across the ocean and disembark at Ellis Island? How would you earn a living? How would you have lived during your time at sea? Find the answers through the quizzes in this book, which cover topics like famous immigrants, the ocean crossing and Ellis Island in popular culture. The questions are designed to be challenging for young students and adults alike and are as fun as they are educational. Discover Ellis Island, immigration history and what it was like to be an immigrant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781625842091

Barry Moreno

Author Barry Moreno works in the Museum Services Division at the Statue of Liberty National Monument. He is the author of Arcadia Publishing's Ellis Island and several other books, including The Statue of Liberty Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Ellis Island.

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Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright © 2011 by Barry Moreno

All rights reserved

Cover illustration courtesy of the National Park Services.

First published 2011

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.62584.209.1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moreno, Barry.

The Ellis Island quiz book / Barry Moreno.

p. cm.

print edition ISBN 978-1-60949-418-6

1. Ellis Island Immigration Station (N.Y. and N.J.)--Miscellanea. 2. United States--Emigration and immigration--History--Miscellanea. I. Title.

JV6484.M655 2011

304.8’73--dc23

2011035034

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contents

Preface

Quiz 1. Background and Beginnings

Quiz 2. The Mother Countries

Quiz 3. Bureaucracy

Quiz 4. The Ocean Crossing and Arrival

Quiz 5. Hale and Hearty? Medical Screening

Quiz 6. The Great Test: Immigrant Inspection

Quiz 7. Helping the Immigrants

Quiz 8. Destinations, Admissions and Exclusions

Quiz 9. Famous Immigrants

Quiz 10. Ellis Island in Pop Culture

Answer Key

About the Author

Preface

Known to all the world as America’s Golden Door, Ellis Island was the nation’s principal gateway for millions of hopeful foreigners seeking legal entry into a country that offered hope, opportunity and relative safety from war, famine and violence. Many an immigrant must have speculated about what the United States was like and what it might have in store for him. One thing is certain: the station itself showed these immigrants the Anglo-American’s form of bureaucracy and his ever-growing attachment to laws of restriction and exclusion. In view of this, it comes as no surprise that the little island—full of red tape, regimentation and an odd mixture of severity and kindness—gave foreigners an experience they would never forget.

Centuries ago, the island had been one of the lands belonging to the native tribes of the Lenape Indians. Here, they gathered sustenance from the island’s rich oyster beds, and years later their Dutch and English successors would do the same. For this reason, it came to be known as Little Oyster Island. In 1765, the place got a more sinister moniker—Gibbet Island—after a pirate was hanged there from a wooden gibbet. Around 1774, Samuel Ellis, a New York City merchant and farmer, bought the property and used it for private commercial ventures. Following his death, his heirs—after a series of family squabbles—sold it to New York State for the sum of $10,000. The state, fearful of another war with Great Britain, then gave it to the federal government, and a small fortress was constructed on it. Later known as Fort Gibson, it was finished in 1811 and armed with a garrison of artillerymen and fourteen heavy guns.

An immigrant family from the German Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg, October 1890. Located in northern Germany, this Protestant part of the Second Reich had a large agricultural population.

Many years later—after the Civil War—the army left the island to the navy, which stored gunpowder and other explosives there. An outcry against this civil danger to New York and the outlying area finally ended with the munitions being removed in 1890.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States grew from a set of Atlantic coast states to a vast nation stretching to the Pacific. Part of its rise was stimulated by heavy European immigration, particularly from Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Holland, Scandinavia and France. These millions were heartily welcome since most of them shared strong cultural, religious and ethnic ties to the dominant Anglo-Saxon population. Only the rise of massive Irish Catholic immigration during the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s and the steady flow of Chinese immigrants in the wake of the California