FIRST IMMIGRANT THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND, ANNIE MOORE!

It is said that around 40% of all Americans are descended from at least one ancestor that was one of the 12 million immigrants that passed through Ellis Island. Annie Moore was the very first one and her legacy lives on today. Who was Annie and what is her story? What became of her after she started her new life in the New World? In this video we honor Annie by sharing her story with all of you. 

Recently we visited both Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, and The Cobh Heritage Center, in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland. Cobh was port of exit for Annie Moore and where her story begins. By the way, if you like these types of articles, be sure to check out our website www.familytreenuts.org where you will see many like it. 

Enough Blarney, and let’s get back to Annie’s story. 

Annie’s parents Matthew and Julia Moore left Ireland for opportunity in New York, in 1888. When they had finally established themselves and earned the money for passage, they sent for their three children that they had left behind in County Cork, Ireland. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the desperation of parents leaving their children for four years so they could prepare a better life for them? Today, it’s truly hard to imagine. 

On December 20, 1891, Annie with her two younger brothers, Anthony, age fifteen and Philip, age twelve, boarded the S.S. Nevada, in Cobh, and forever left Paddy’s green shamrock shore. 

The trio of children fist arrived in New York Harbor on December 31st but their offloading was delayed because the S.S. Nevada had arrived too late in the day to process the third-class passengers. 

This twist in fate set up the scenario for Annie to make history. On the morning of January 1, 1892, the gates were opened and the new immigrants crowded to get their papers processed and start their new year, with a new life, in a new country. The story says that a large German man was about to be the first but a Longshoreman took Annie by the hand and ushered her to front, shouting “ladies first”! Suddenly this average young lady had found herself making history.

The opening of Ellis Island was a large public relations event and Annie was officially registered by the former private secretary, to the secretary of the treasury. Former congressman John B. Weber who was then the superintendent of immigration presented her with a $10 gold piece in which Annie replied that she would never get rid of. It was reported to the media that it was Annie’s fifteenth birthday, but in fact she was seventeen and her birthday was April 24, 1874.

Annie and her brothers were reunited with their parents and settled with them at their five-story tenement at, 32 Monroe Street, which was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Annie later moved to an apartment that was close by, on New Chambers Street. Annie lived her whole adult life within a few city blocks of New York. 

When Annie was twenty-one, she married a bakery clerk and fish salesman, named, Joseph Augustus Schayer, who was a son of German immigrants. Her father-in-law obtained a patent for macaroons and it is thought that Annie took solace in sweets from her poverty-stricken life, which caused her to struggle with her weight.

Annie had eleven children but only five lived to be adults. Her first child died as a baby, but the next four survived to be adults. Only one of the final six children survived childhood, and they died at only twenty-one-years-old. It is thought that her life of poverty and her rapidly failing health was the reason that so many of her children died so young. Three of her children had children and many descendants live on today through them and are all over the United States.

Annie lived in poverty most of her life, which was so common for immigrants of the time and passed away from heart failure on December 6, 1924. She was only fifty years-old. Family stories say that Annie became very obese and when she died she was too large to get down the stairs of her apartment, and had to be lowered out the window. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens with six of her children, five of which died as babies and one who lived to only twenty-one-years old. Until recently she was without a headstone but she was blessed with one in 2008. Annie’s brother Anthony died in his twenties in the Bronx. 

Annie Moore has been memorialized in various items such as ornaments, charms, dolls, collector’s plates and even this video. Several songs and books have told her story and her name has been given to awards and even a few pubs.

For many years her identity was wrongfully thought to be another woman with the same name. This Annie moved to Texas, and married a descendant of the Irish hero, Daniel O’Connell, before dying at age 46-years-old by being ran over by a streetcar. This Annie Moore’s descendants believed that she was the Annie that was first through Ellis Island and some of them where present for ceremonies there. The Annie’s image was likely used as a model for the sculptures that celebrate her. 

Most of Annie’s story is not unlike millions of other immigrants’ stories but fate would see to it that she would be remembered forever because she was the first immigrant processed through the brand-new Ellis Island Immigration Center. Her story is remembered mostly due to the two sculptures celebrating her. One sculpture lies at Annie’s port of exit, in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland which was unveiled on February 9, 1993, by the Irish President Mary Robinson. Another sculpture of Annie stands at Ellis Island, New York. Both sculptures were done by Jeanne Rynhardt.

The sculpture in Cobh sits outside of the Cobh Heritage Center which is a interactive museum that covers the Irish immigration story. From 1815 to 1970, approximately 3 million Irish immigrated from here. The museum does an amazing job telling the story of the Irish immigration experience. Be sure to see our individual video from here that is jam packed full of facts about our ancestors. 

So, there you have it, the story of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through the famous Ellis Island. What do you think? Are you inspired by Annie or are you saddened by her difficult life? We’d love for you to comment below with your thoughts. Also, if you are a descendant of an Ellis Island immigrant, we’d love for you to comment with their name and if you can, tell us a little about them. We honor them by remembering them. We are proud to tell the story of Annie Moore, and be sure to check out the video below of this story.

– Col. Russ Carson, Jr., Founder, Family Tree Nuts