DEATHS ON ELLIS ISLAND

QUESTION. I have learned that my grandmother had a younger half sister who died at the hospital where they were detained when entering the United States. Was there a hospital on Ellis Island? Do you know where I might begin to look for this child?

ANSWER. When Ellis Island opened 1 January 1892, the $500,000 immigration station consisted of about a dozen buildings, including a large two-story main processing building, a separate group of four hospital buildings, surgeon's quarters, record storage office, restaurant and kitchen building, detention building, disinfection house, a boiler house, laundry and utility plant -- all constructed of wood. In addition, the old brick and stone Fort Gibson and Navy magazines were converted for detainees' dormitories and other purposes. A fire on June 14, 1897 destroyed Ellis Island's wooden buildings.

A new immigration station opened 17 December 1900 at a cost of some $1.2 million. In 1902 its hospital building, auxiliary laundry and other facilities opened. Most of the 3,500 or so who died at Ellis Island were buried in the Calvary and Evergreen cemeteries in Brooklyn (New York).

Presumably these death records were filed with the New York City office of vital records, so you should be able to obtain a copy of the death certificate. Information about and links to various online sources pertaining to death records can be found in RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees -- Vital Records: Death, Tombstones and Cemeteries. http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/lesson4.htm

There is a link to all of the U.S. states' vital records office at: http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/lesson1.htm and the one for New York is: http://www.vitalrec.com/ny.html

See also: http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/lesson15.htm

Additional information about Ellis Island is available in the Shaking Your Family Tree archives: http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/syft/immigration/

* * * SHAKING YOUR FAMILY TREE (SYFT) by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG.

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©Joyce Gregory