Oral histories of US immigrants go online
by Patricia R - September 7, 2010
United States, 7th September: US immigrants can have access to their oral histories by visiting the website www. ancestry. com/immigration.
Earlier, the access to oral histories of US immigrants was available only by making a visit to Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York. But with the access of histories going online, people are no longer restricted to wading through the yellow photographs of the old World or catch a ferry trip to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum to know about the immigrants who walked on the US soil at Ellis Island first.
The record keeping of oral histories began in the 1970s by the National ParkService. Till now, the museum has a collection of around 170 million records of oral histories of immigrants in the US. The lists also include people who immigrated to the US by ship between the period of 1820 and 1960 and records of 7 million US citizenship and naturalization.
The concerted efforts between the National Parks Service and ancestory.com, an online genealogy group have been resulted in the online access of oral histories of the US immigrants. So, just click and know whatever you want to know about Ellis Island immigrants without spending any fee for doing so.
The experiences of the Ellis Island immigrants arriving to live in the US in the 20th century can be listened in the comfort of your homes. The experiences are stated with details and in enthralling story-telling sessions.
With immigrants creating new lives in America, the stories of their native homelands and their journeys to the US got lost, and it is these forgotten stories of their lives which we want to share with the people, said senior vice president of global content for the website, Christopher Tracy.
The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a huge number of migrants hailing from Europe moving to the US with the hope of opportunities of life and freedom in the new land. The experience of immigrating to Ellis Island did prove to be exciting for many of the immigrants, especially for those who later grew up to become citizens of the US and continued to stay in the US permanently and brought up their kids as US citizens.
The collection of the US immigration records can be browsed at www. ancestry .com from Thursday till Monday for free.
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