Annie Moore: First Ellis Island Immigrant

By Linda Harris Sittig

I have often said that many of the Strong Women I write about find me. As did Annie Moore.

A few weeks ago, while browsing YouTube for exercise videos, I came across a mention of a group called Celtic Thunder. OK, maybe not random?

Intrigued, I clicked on the video and started listening to a song from one of their concerts,“Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears”. As I listened, I realized it was a song about the first immigrant to step onto Ellis Island’s threshold on January 2, 1892. She was Annie Moore, a 15-year-old girl from Ireland.

Like many Irish ballads, it plucked my heartstrings and left me wanting to know more.

IRELAND

Human habitation of Ireland dates to 9,000 BC, at the end of the great Ice Age. By 4,000 BC, prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups dominated, and by 600 BC, the people we know as the Celts existed throughout the island.

Ireland was always an island of turmoil, controlled by many powerful individual chieftains and their clans. And while even ancient Rome considered taking over the island, total conquest did not occur until 1601, when the Irish lost to the English at the Battle of Kinsale, and Ireland became the first English territory to be colonized.

Cap that with the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, with William the Conqueror of England, the victor. This secured all of Ireland for England, and Irish Catholics whose families had owned their land for decades, or even generations, were suddenly forced to become tenants of English landowners.

And then the Famine, known in Ireland as The Great Hunger. Almost all the crops grown in Ireland, grains, corn, wheat, etc., were shipped to England for sale by the English landlords. The only crop the Native Irish were allowed to keep was potatoes.

In 1845–1851, a six-year blight hit potato crops across the island. Since it was the only crop the tenants had for themselves, the famine was a disaster of gigantic proportions. One million Irish died of starvation and disease (while other crops were still sent by the British landlords back to England). Another 2 million Irish fled the island, leading to a massive influx of immigrants to America and other countries.

Even after the Famine, the Irish who had survived were mainly poverty-stricken and still under the thumb of British rule.

ANNIE MOORE AND THE BALLAD

Annie was born in 1874 (or thereabouts) in County Cork. Her parents had emigrated four years earlier, leaving their three children with relatives back in Ireland. Hoping, I assume, to establish themselves before sending for their children.

In 1892, Annie came by ship, holding the hands of her two younger brothers, Anthony and Philip. After being processed at Ellis Island, the three children were reunited with their parents in Manhattan, New York City. And Annie passed into America as a relatively unknown immigrant.

Annie and her family settled on Monroe Street in one of the many tenements on the Lower East Side of New York City. And there they stayed, eking out a hardscrabble immigrant life while counting pennies and stretching food.

Annie married a local, Joseph Schayer, son of German immigrants, and together they had eleven children: only five of whom survived childhood. Then, at age 50, Annie died of heart failure.

ANCESTORS

And that made me think of my Irish ancestors.

My mother’s Irish family landed in Philadelphia in 1851, where signs in shop windows proclaimed: “No Irish Need Apply.” But because they were weavers with a knowledge of textiles, the family quickly found work and settled in Kensington, the Irish section of Philadelphia.

They were part of chain migration, meaning that a cousin or two were already in Philadelphia and could sponsor them for naturalization. In fact, as late as 2004, a Philadelphia joke went, “If you’re looking for ancestors from County Tyrone, just go to St. Michael’s parish in Kensington.

I am not related to Annie Moore, but her immigrant journey has been repeated by almost every immigrant group that leaves behind intolerable conditions and comes to America seeking freedom and sanctuary.

ANNIE’S LEGACY

The song “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” was composed by Irish songwriter Brendan Graham after a visit to Ellis Island in 1995. He was so touched by standing where so many Irish had entered America, and especially about young Annie Moore, that he wrote the song on the airplane while flying home

Some of the details in the song weren’t exactly correct. Annie was 17 when she immigrated, and only 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. But the heart of the song about Annie is really about the heart of immigration.

Today, an estimated 40% of all Americans can trace their ancestry back to Ellis Island, and 98% of us have immigrant backgrounds.

And if you think about it, unless your heritage is Native American, then we are all a product of immigration.

 ALL OF US.

Below is the link to “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” performed by Celtic Thunder on YouTube. You may have to click the link twice. Once there, go to full screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-s5xDQ5j4.

I hope you enjoyed Annie’s story. If you are not yet a follower of the Strong Women blog, please sign up on the right-hand side. You will receive the blog once a month in your email.

And I hope you will be inspired.

~ Linda

Author of Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, Counting Crows, B-52 DOWN, and Opening Closed Doors. All available in bookstores or online, and all celebrating Strong Women.