WWC Celebrates Ellis Island: Portal to NJ

The Water Works Conservancy, Inc. (WWC) invites you to its monthly Members Evening, open to members, friends and the public, Celebrating Ellis Island: The Portal to New Jersey and The New World, with Author Barry Moreno, Thursday, April 28, 7:30 - 9:30 PM, Oradell Borough Town Hall Multipurpose Room (2nd Floor), 355 Kinderkamack Road, Oradell, NJ.   WWC’s Members Evenings are part of an ongoing series of celebrations of Bergen County’s immigrant experience.

Join us for another fascinating evening with Barry Moreno, author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ellis Island and The Children of Ellis Island,  who will share with us tales of the immigrant experience passing through the portal to New Jersey and the New World.  Even immigrants who hoped to move farther west would stop in New Jersey to learn what they needed to learn to survive in the New World.  New Jersey was the first stop but it often became the final destination for many of those passing through Ellis Island.  Barry Moreno is a free lance writer and the author of a number of other books on the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island including Castle Garden and Battery Park, NY (Images of America), The History of American Immigration, The Cuban Americans, The Mexican Americans and the German Americans.  He also works in the reference room in the Bob Hope Memorial Library at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York City.  There will be copies of Mr. Moreno’s two books, The Encyclopedia of Ellis Island and The Children of Ellis Island for sale and he will sign them at the end of his talk.

An immigrant’s passage through Ellis Island was no simple matter. With thousands of foreigners streaming through the station every day, a series of bureaucratic hurdles and a strict system of crowd control were kept firmly in place. Although procedures were much the same over the years, there were seasonal variations: in summer, for example, aliens could be given eye examinations at the entrance to the main building downstairs rather than upstairs, as in the other seasons of the year.

What was a would-be-American’s first experience in his or her new homeland like between the 1890s and 1920s?  Would you pass the dreaded health inspection?  Do your eyes look infected and will that keep you out of America?  Fears and hopes combined as passengers from steamships awaited their fate at the entrance to America.  And what did the children feel as their parents led them to a new land?  Join us and find out!  Children, families and curious people of all ages are welcome!

New Jersey conviviality and refreshments will be served at the Members Evening.  Join us for this moving evening of tales of the Ellis Island immigrant experience.   A suggested donation is $5 for WWC Members, $8 for friends and guests, and for students, free.  Please call 201-265-1000, to let us know how many you will be bringing to this Member’s Evening.

The Water Works Conservancy is an educational and preservation advocacy organization dedicated to telling the story of the Hackensack River and the people who have lived in the Hackensack River Valley, Glaciers to suburbs.  For more information, please call 201-265-1000 or visit WWC's website: www.HWWC.org and click on EVENTS