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a PHS officer at Ellis Island
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On New Year’s Day in 1892 fifteen year-old Annie Moore became the first immigrant to land on Ellis Island. After undergoing a brief medical exam, Public Health Service officers judged Annie to be “morally and physically fit,” and within hours of her landing, Annie joined her parents at their home on the lower East Side in Manhattan.

“No previous experience aroused for all such anxiety as the test of Ellis Island. With a word or gesture from an official, one standing a few feet from the gate opening to the golden land could be refused entry after having traveled so far.”
                                                      Rachel Caloff, 1894
Images of Ellis Island


Between 1892 and 1924, over twelve million immigrants began their lives in America as Annie did with a trip to Ellis Island. Today, the descendants of these immigrants can be found across the nation; by some estimates, nearly forty percent of all Americans today have an ancestor who came to America through Ellis Island.

All of these immigrants underwent a medical exam at the hands of the Public Health Service. For travelers in first and second class, the exam was often a brief formality, but for the many immigrants who traveled steerage, the medical exam was more detailed and carried with it the possibility of detainment on the island or, even worse, a forced return to their country of origin.
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For immigrants, Ellis Island was the first stop on the road to becoming Americans. For the Public Health Service, Ellis Island provided what they hoped was a final border against the importation of disease.