Christmas Comes Early at Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com now has "all readily available U.S. passenger lists from 1820 to 1960" digitized and indexed. This includes those post-1924 Ellis Island records you've been dreaming about. You can search the entire Immigration Collection for free through the end of November.

More than 100 American ports of arrival are represented in the compilation including the entire collection of passenger list records (1892-1957) from Ellis Island, a historic landmark and icon of immigration. The collection also accounts for popular ports in Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans and the Angel Island receiving station in San Francisco. [Link]

INS Seeks to Identify, Deport Vandals

From the San Francisco (Calif.) Chronicle:

ANGEL ISLAND
Immigrants left their marks
Poems were carved into the Bay Area's detention barracks

Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, October 1, 2005

Hundreds of heartfelt poems were carved into the walls by those detained at Angel Island's Immigration Station during an era when it was U.S. government policy to drastically limit the number of Chinese and Asian immigrants.

The poems, a long-forgotten chapter of Bay Area history, speak of immigrant desires, fears, anger and longing for a better life.

"I wish I could travel on a cloud far away, reunite with my wife and son," says a poem composed of Chinese characters and carved into the barracks' wall. "When the moonlight shines on me alone, the night seems even longer."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]