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American Morning

Ellis Island Is Now Online

Aired April 18, 2001 - 11:27   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: This next story will be interest to millions of Americans whose ancestors came through Ellis Island. Digging up your roots could get a lot easier. An enormous database was unveiled at New York's Ellis Island yesterday. The names of millions of immigrants to the U.S. dating back to 1892 could now be at your fingertips, thanks to this new Web site.

Here is CNN's Deborah Feyerick in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In 1920, when she was 6 years old, Felicita Gabbaccia left Turin, Italy, with her parents and brother. Sailing past the Statue of Liberty, they landed on Ellis Island, with few belongings and great faith in the future.

FELICITA GABBACCIA SALTO, IMMIGRANT: This was my Uncle Peter, who was 16, and my Uncle Luigi, who was 18.

FEYERICK: The Gabbaccia family is now listed on line in a new Ellis Island database. They're among 17 million immigrants who arrived in America between 1892 and 1924 and whose relatives can now trace the beginnings of life in a new land through ship passenger lists or manifests.

SALTO: That was really when I got emotional, was when I saw that and saw the whole family listed on there, names, ages, where we were coming from, where we were going, did we have money, did we know how to read and write.

FEYERICK: The family history project was created by the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's an opportunity to bring the past together with the present.

FEYERICK: It took 12,000 volunteers seven years to transcribe all the names stored on microfilm.

RUSSELL NELSON, PROJECT VOLUNTEER: The big challenge was just the enormity of the task and the painstaking labor that was required to decipher what was being written on the records.

FEYERICK (on camera): The original manifests were destroyed in the late '40s, early '50s, sold as paper pulp for $12,000, and while there are 22 million names in this database, millions of others are missing. Either the records were lost, the microfilm was too difficult to read, or they were ruined in a fire.

(voice-over): And while it may take several spellings to find a long-lost relative, the program is designed to be relatively easy.

EDWIN SCHLOSSBERG, DATABASE DESIGNER: We actually put together four different software packages that in a sense do similar-sounding names.

FEYERICK: Names that may have changed over time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a myth that names changed here. The fact is that when people changed their names -- and they did -- it was when they were begin naturalized as American citizens.

FEYERICK: Once the Web site is fully up and running, people will even be able to create their own family pages, to fill out the details of lives that began anew with a boat ride.

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Once again, if you're interested in that Web site the address is ellisislandrecord.org. Now that's the good news, and that's how it works. The frustrating news -- and we're finding this out firsthand -- is that they're having a bit of a problem. So many people are trying to access this.

We found out because we're trying to trace my ancestors. We're tracing my great-grandfather, Eiser Cohen (ph), who came over from Russia, and I happen to have had -- I have his naturalization papers and the papers when he and my grandfather Jack became a citizen in 1915. We did find him, Eiser Cohen come up on the Ellis Island Web site briefly, and then it crashed.

So we're still working on that. I just want to show you this paper and share that story with you. We're going to work on that, maybe bring it to you tomorrow.

HARRIS: So it's your fault.

KAGAN: It's my -- well, no, we were -- we did not crash the Ellis Island records, but it's fun to find your family roots and get a little bit of family history.

HARRIS: That's fascinating. Good for you.

KAGAN: Great-grandpa Eiser, I guess, is how that would work.