Croton-on-Hudson, NY - Liberty

‘Give me your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’

                                Emma Lazarus

I’m not going to mention names but someone in this house (who has a moustache and goatee) decided that we spend so much time at museums and National Monuments that we’d better get the 9:00 ferry to Liberty Island if we wanted to see the Statue and Ellis Island in a day. So, we bought the 9:00 tickets which means that we have to be at the tip of Lower Manhattan by 8:30 check-in. We began to count backwards and it quickly became obvious that we’d better get up at 5:00 if we wanted to take the train to New York City and the subway to the tip of Manhattan and be there to check in at 8:30 for our Statue of Liberty boat ride. But who set their alarm for 4:00 by mistake? Again, no names but this person does NOT have a moustache and a goatee. We park, buy our tickets and are on the early, early train. Oops, we’ve left the iPhone on the dashboard of the car. We get out at the next stop, wait, take the next train back to where we began, retrieve the phone and now we’re on our way, not as early as we had planned.

We get to Grand Central, rush to the subways and are on - in the middle of the 7:30 crush. When we get down to the Statue of Liberty dock, we are early, way early and have time for a scone and another cup of coffee. Who set that alarm for 5:00?

It’s difficult to get a bad picture of the Statue of Liberty. Especially from the ferry as it approaches the island. In 1871, the sculptor, Auguste Bartholdi, toured the US to find a suitable spot for his collossal statue. He finally chose NYC and realized that the perfect spot was on an island in the harbor where everyone could see it. In 1879 Gustave Eiffel designed the internal framework, noted architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the pedestal and the statue was assembled on Bedloe’s Island in 1886.

There are suspicions that Bertholdi used his mother as his model - no one knows for sure and I’ll let you make your own decision - here’s a picture of Liberty’s face and his mother’s. (That nose is almost a give-away.)

Liberty has stood for many things over its lifetime: during the early 1900’s, the notion of immigrants seeking ‘liberty’ was strong as hundreds of thousands of immigrants steamed past it towards Ellis Island, their first stop in America. During the war years, it stood for America as it was used in posters to buy war bonds. Today - well, it’s used to sell lemons, radio stations, cars, you name it - everyone wants the statue in their ads.

But, as Bertholdi said: ‘Colossal statuary does not consist simply in making an enormous statue. It ought to produce an emotion in the breast of the spectator, not becaue of its volume, but because its size is in keeping with the idea that it interprets.’

And, though the statue is used for advertising and is almost a parody, the very sight evokes a sense of grandeur. The ferries over to the island were packed - me, I checked to see where the life jackets and boats were. I was afraid as we neared the island that everyone would surge to one side of the boat. Whew, didn’t happen.

Every band wants to play here at the Statue of Liberty and we found this band playing at the flag.

We toured the museum, the statue, the island and then off to Ellis Island, the second stop on the ferry tour.

The original Ellis Island Immigration station was wooden and not very impressive. People complained that it lacked the grandeur that America should have. It burned and they built a much grander building of brick with turrets. Aha, people then complained that it was too expensive and too ostentatios - after all, it’s only for immigrants. Can’t win for losing.

        2 stories of immigrants. An immigrant named Frank Woodhall arrived and as he was walking up the steps the examining doctors thought something was strange. They pulled him aside and told him that they wanted a full exam of him. He said that he wanted 2 female doctors. Sure enough, it was a woman, named Mary Johnson, a printer from Nova Scotia who wanted to pose as a man to         get a job in printing. After lots of questioning, they let ‘him’ go and he made quite a successful living as a printer - but as Frank Woodhall. (No one would hire a woman printer - it was a man’s job.)

        2 brothers came over and one, to prove how fit he was, walked up the stairs on his hands. Hmmm, the doctors said as they marked him as mentally unstable and were ready to send him back. Oops, he had to plead that he was only trying to show how strong and fit he was, his brother had to         testify for him and finally they let him go. Later on he actually made a movie about an immigrant coming through Ellis Island; his name: Charlie Chaplin.

The immigrants arrived by steamer, disembarked and were moved into this room to wait their turn.

This is the room we saw - almost the same.

Gary’s grandfather came over by himself from Czechoslovakia to America to live with his sister who had come earlier. Imagine his journey and his entry here. Scared, anxious, unable to speak the language, lonely, not knowing who was a scam artist and who really wanted to help, hoping they wouldn’t find anything wrong and send him back, not knowing where to spend the first night or what to do. But, he made it, as did most of the others. Amazing people, these immigrants.

98.1% of the immigrants moved on from Ellis Island. Only 1.9% were turned down and sent back to the country they came from. I’ve always heard that the names of many immigrants were changed when they arrived in America either to be more ‘American’ or because of misinterpretation or because the immigration took their best shot at spelling. However, we learned that this probably happened in Europe and not here in America. All of their information (name, address, age, job, etc.) was given to an officer in Europe who put it on a manifest. When the immigrant got to America, they had better give the same information to match the manifest or they would be sent back. Here’s a page from a manifest:

Gary’s grandfather, John Maczek, and his grandmother, Gizella Jurisin, came over during the early part of the 19th Century. Gary has been pouring over the immigration website for a while trying to find them but has had no luck. What was the name on the manifest? Was it Maczek? Macsek? Maksek? Masek? Who knows? There are many ways to spell this name and he hasn’t found the right combination - yet. We even paid the $7.00 fee for a session with someone who does this for a living and she gave him lots of hints but couldn’t find his grandparents either. Armed with these hints, he’ll continue his search.

Here he is walking up the same steps that his grandparents walked. Pretty cool.

Then it was time to head back to Manhattan for the rides home. Ferries, trains, subways, auto: we took them all today.

Opportunities are never lost, someone will take those you miss.
                                    Anonymous