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CASTLE GARDEN
Manchester Guardian
London, Middlesex, England
April 17, 1856
THE NEW YORK EMIGRANT DEPOT
(From the Albany Evening Journal)
The most valuable importation from Europe into the United
States is man. Heretofore this description of freight has been shipped without
care, transported across the Atlantic recklessly, and cast hurriedly upon our
shores in a damaged condition. Woollen, cotton and iron goods have ever been
brought here under the guarantees of sea-worthiness in the vessel, of full
insurance, of careful carriage and of final reception into perfect storehouses,
watched by night and by day against robbery, fire and injury from the elements.
The most precious importations from the Old World, we have ever made we have
till this year treated with a wasteful neglect. The New York commissioners of
emigration, stimulated and aided by wise and philanthropic men, have changed
this. The emigrants to the New World through the entrapot of New York are now,
and hereafter will be kindly met in the harbour, and taken with their property
to a building of vast proportions which is to them at once a refuge from fraud,
and escape from ....[rest of paragraph all blackened and smudged].
Castle Garden has upon its western side dock, at which comes
the steamboat or barge, loaded with the emigrants who have been taken off the
passenger vessels. A narrow gangway is made by moveable fences, through which
the entire number are passed for medical inspection. This is very rigid. In good
weather it takes place in the open air. The object is to ascertain and
immediately provide for, cases of hospital treatment, and to discover those who,
from extreme age, chronic disease, orphanage, pregnancy, lunacy, or idiocy, are
likely to become public burthens. The shippers have to assume these risks, and
provision is made for them under the "commutation." The
inspection ended, the emigrants are admitted into the body of the castle, and
marched up to a square in the centre, railed off on the outside with two
entrances, one leading to the right and the other to the left. The first is for
those who speak German or French; the second for those who speak only English.
Inside the square are clerks, standing at desks facing the rails and ready with
ledgers open before them to register the new comers. The pages of the large
books are ruled into columns, and when written up show the names of the heads of
families, or single persons, the vessel they came by, its captain's name, the
number in the family, their destination, the amount of money they bring, and the
relatives they previously had in the country. Passed one by one within the alley
up to the registering clerks, and then passed on, this important work is done
speedily, and without confusion. When finished the heads of families and
individuals are interrogated about their choice of routes to their destinations.
A counter extends on three sides of the square, and on this are exposed maps of
all the railroad and steamboat routes in the United States. The fullest
information is given, and complete impartiality shown by the clerks between
competing lines. An attempt at undue influence over the emigrant's choice would
be punished by a discharge from employment.
While the registration and selection of routes are taking
place, the luggage of the emigrants has been passed from the barge or steamer,
by the forward gangway, on to the dock and into the office of the weighmaster.
When the route, say to the west, has been selected, the party receives a printed
slip, telling the weighmaster how many railroad tickets he requires to -say
Milwaukee - the price charged for them, the number of packages he has and the
charge per 100 for their weight over 50 lb. This is signed with the contracting
agent's name, and is the memorandum of the passage agreement. This slip is taken
back to the office of the weighmaster. The packages are identified, put on the
scales and weighed. One of 20 large, thin, bound volumes, marked
"Milwaukee," is opened, and on the inner margin is entered a full
description of the packages, their weight, freight, &c. Next to this margin
are printed seven coupons on yellow paper, in large type, of numbers for the
packages, with the route of transportation left blank. If the party has four
packages, for of these coupons are cut off, filled up, and pasted on to them,
and a ticket corresponding with the inner marginal description is then cut off
and handed to him. This is his baggage receipt. Then the printed slip which he
brought into the weighing office is filled up and he is sent back with it to the
cashier in the central office, who takes pay for the passage and freight. What
luggage is to remain in the castle overnight is passed out of the weighmaster's
office into a vast storeroom and there registered and labelled with conspicuous
blue tickets. A receipt in blue is given for it, by number and designation of
the pieces.
During this time fires have been kindled (it is
December) in two washing rooms, each 50 feet by 20 feet in size. On one side of
the room is a bath, large enough for a dozen at once to roll in and splash
about. The water stands in it two feet deep. On two other sides is a large wide
trough, with the water flowing rapidly in at one end, and out at the other; at
which any 50 people can be scrubbed and sweetened. Abundance of towels are hung
conveniently and soap is not only most suggestively handy, but has got to be
used. Every emigrant landing at the castle well enough to stand the process is
washed clean before he or she gets out.
If the vessels arrive early in the day, so as to land their
passengers at the castle before one o'clock in the afternoon, the commissioners
generally have them out and comfortable on their way by evening. If they
have to stay over for any cause, the room for comfortably sheltering them is
ample. Three thousand people have slept there, after having previously feasted
on fresh and excellent provision. Bread, cheese, coffee, and milk can be bought
in the castle in any quantities, and at wholesale prices. When a ship is
telegraphed, the baker employed is notified and a batch extraordinary goes into
the oven. From personal inspection, we can vouch for the most excellent quality
of all this food. the ramparts of the castle, its galleries, and the vast body
of the inner circle, are free to the emigrants for exercise or pleasure. In cold
weather, it id perfectly warmed at at all times, when passengers are undergoing
registration or crowd the room, a fountain is in play throwing a very high jet.
The purifying influence upon the atmosphere is most perceptible. There is a
large kitchen, where hot water can be had by the women, and where they can cook
anything they may want. Runners and boarding-house keepers are rigidly excluded
from even sight of the emigrants. They are so faithfully cared for, that if
liquor is smuggled in through the gates, and is found, it is taken from them and
poured upon the ground before their eyes. They are not permitted to drink
anything intoxicating within the castle walls. All immoralities, all disorders,
are suppressed, vigorously but kindly. The discipline is paternal, but just.
Many interesting facts are developed at the registration
desks. The most striking is one that should take the conceit out of much of our
4th of July oratory. It appears that the moving impulse to most of the
immigration is not the beauty of the bird of freedom, nor the seductive waving
and beckoning of the stripes and stars. It is the "cousin,"
"brother," "aunt," "sister," "niece,"
"father," "daughter," "uncle," "son,"
"mother," or "friends there," who, already established here,
have by epistelary coaxing, seconded by the pulling of the affections, drawn the
emigrants from the eastern side of the Atlantic to the western. The inducement
to full nine tenths of the immigration into the United States by the port of New
York is not cheap land, nor civil freedom, nor high wages. It is simply the
existence here of relative and friends whom the new comers wish to live with.
The next fact interesting to the registration clerks and the
public, is the different modes with which the immigrants meet the inquiry into
the extent of their "cash means."- The Irish invariably understate it.
They are afraid of being robbed. They also fancy that they will get things
cheaper if they create the impression that they are needy or destitute. They
always conceal their money resources, more or less. The Germans also uniformly
understate their cash means, but not to the extent the Irish do. They are afraid
that they will be robbed probably, and taxed certainly. The Englishman just as
invariably overstates his pecuniary resources as the German and Irishman
understate theirs. - The Scotch, the Hollanders, and the Swedes, truthfully and
frankly tell how much money they have, and if the statement is received
with doubt, are ready to pull out their belts or purses, and show the
"pile." From this it will be seen that the amount of gold and sliver
coin, and bills of exchange, brought into the country by immigration, is much
greater than our statistics show it to be.
From Germany come more females than males. From Ireland
vastly many more. The entire immigration furnishes us with 25 per cent more
females than males. This fact will interest economists and suggest to them more
than one subject of speculation.
The movement of this addition to our population, after
arrival- its distribution through the nation - is different than what is
commonly supposed to be. Puritan New England receives now most of the Irish
catholics; Massachusetts more than any of her sister states. Pennsylvania takes
mostly English and Welsh; New York "a great deal of everything, " as
our informant said; New Jersey ditto; Ohio, Irish and Germans; Wisconsin, Swedes
and Germans; Iowa, Germans almost exclusively; Connecticut, Irish; Minnesota,
Germans; Maryland, Irish and Germans; Indiana, all nations, the Germans
preponderating; Michigan, ditto; Illinois, ditto; and Canada, nearly all Scotch
and English. The causes that induce immigration very much decide the
distribution of the immigrants. Demand for labour and wages may re-distribute
them, but primarily they seek their friends and compatriots. The following table
of the apportionment of some 29,000 of them, arrived during the past summer,
will be found interesting. It includes a statement of the amount of money they
took to their several destinations, as given by themselves. It is much less than
the actual sum in nearly every item.:-
Passengers
for
Passengers for
12297 New
York.....$310,600.69
89 Minnesota.........$3,582.00
736 New Jersey....
12,119.44
136 District of Col... 2,605.62
2001 Ohio .............
100,735.74
10 Florida.............. 184.50
2867 Pennsylvania...
109,809.37
12 South America.. 11,873.00
328 Maryland..........
8,649.34
25 Delaware.......... 550.00
638 Indiana.............
30,858.70
4 Cuba................ 112.00
717 Michigan..........
40,844.41
15 Louisiana......... 2,214.25
2035 Illinois.............
123,697.50
45 South Carolina... 2,510.75
3247 Wisconsin......
263,381.36
16 North Carolina.. 1,235.00
115 Kentucky......
3,996.50
2107 Canada............. 16,990.25
429 Iowa..............
25,721.00
1325 Massachusetts... 20,109.25
245 Missouri.........
15,489.85
18
Georgia
1,609.25
188
Virginia
12,314.87
24 Tennessee........... 418.60
383
Connecticut.......10,137.08
41 Maine................. 182.70
214
California
43,165.00
8
Arkansas
9.50
280 Rhode Island.... 2,825.53
How a few of these went to slave states: Of those who
went to Virginia the most were English and Germans, and nearly all were bound
for the cheap farming land and the substantially free society of the western
counties. The other slave states received droppings from this great flow of
population and wealth into our nation felt the influence of it not in their
negro districts.
...
No charges whatsoever are made for services at the
Castle or for the use of its excellent accommodations. The passengers and their
luggage are transported from there by water, to their several points of
departure from New York free of expense. While awaiting remittances they are
permitted to abide in the friendly garden as at a free inn. Frequently, upon a
pledge of their baggage, the poorer one obtain a sufficient advance to enable
them to reach their journey's end. A small commission charged the railroad and
steamboat lines over which the commissioners forward the immigrants is designed
to meet the expenses of the depot. But they fell considerably short of doing
this. Like many other noble benevolences in this world, this reform does not pay
in money, only good.
Chicago Daily Times
Chicago, Cook, Illinois
April 1, 1890
CASTLE GARDEN TO GO.
Where All the Immigrants Came From and their Destinations.
NEW YORK, March 29.- Castle Garden will soon be no more. The
Federal Government is to take charge of the landing of immigrants, which has
hitherto been in the hands of officers of the state of New York. Castle Garden
is a dilapidated rotunda surrounded by equally ramshackle structures for the
housing of the strangers on these shores, and the whole ugly conglomeration is
likely to be razed to the ground when the immigrant station is established.
Castle Garden was the most popular place of amusement of
older New York. It was here that Jenny Lind first sang in America, and the
audience was as fashionable as any that ever assembled in the Academy of music
to hear the divine Patti's notes. The Garden stands on the sea wall which curves
around the eastern side and lower end of Battery Park, once the breathing spot
of the city, and still one of teh most attractive parts on account of the
beautiful view it affords of the bay dotted with islands and filled with
shipping. The Battery, as it is known, is historic ground. It was the strongest
place of defense hereabouts in colonial days. George Washington's headquarters
were on the upper edge of the park in a hotel where now th towers of Washington
building, a twelve-story "skyscraper."
The records of Castle Garden extend back to May 5,
1847, the date of the organization of the Board of Commissioners of Emigration
and since that time nearly 10,000,000 immigrants - the exact number to Jan. 1,
1890, is 9,639,635, or about one-sixth of the entire population of the United
States - have been landed there. The following table shows the countries from
whence the aliens came and their numbers:
Ireland, 2541,148; England, 1,178,157; Wales, 60,033;
Scotland, 277,766; Germany, 3,425,208; France, 170,820; Russia, 224,559; Poland,
18,244; Switzerland, 172,180; Sweden, 825,831; Norway, 178,011; Belgium, 29,869;
Holland, 89,381; Italy, 317,192; Spain, 19,215; Portugal, 2,295; Denmark,
123,033; Hungary, 131,746; Austria, 109,622; Bohemia, 76,457; China, 3,151;
Australia, 606; Turkey, 1,831; Greece, 2,044; Other countries, mostly Canadians,
162,173. Total 9,639,635.
The recorded destinations of the immigrants of 1889
were as follows:
Alaska,0; Alabama, 508; Arizona, 67; Arkansas, 325; Connecticut, 7,271;
Colorado, 2,488; Delaware, 243; Dist. of Columbia, 330; Dakota, 5,311; Florida,
258; Georgia, 180; Indiana, 2,088; Indian Territory, 118; Illinois, 24,574;
Iowa, 8,324; Idaho, 143; New York, 96,901; Ohio, 10,807; Oregon, 1,015;
Pennsylvania, 46,612; Rhode Island, 2,660; South Carolina, 105; Tennessee, 419;
Texas, 2,833; Kentucky, 657; Kansas, 2,313; Louisiana, 649; Maine, 182;
Maryland, 1,415; Michigan, 12,107; Missouri, 4,828; Minnesota, 10,607;
Mississippi, 14; Montana, 1,033; Massachusetts, 11, 649; New Hampshire, 371;
North Carolina, 59; Nebraska, 5,039; Nevada, 212; New Jersey, 14,691; New
Mexico, 109; Utah, 1,429; Vermont, 436; Virginia, 231; West Virginia, 255;
Wisconsin, 8,647; Washington, 1,125; Wyoming, 346.
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