Dorothy whipple in boston 1900

Imagine the anticipation of these folks aboard the SS Canopic as it docked in Boston over 90 years ago.

Dorothy Whipple Fry Photo Albums , Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Were your grandparents or great-grandparents among these immigrants, who had perhaps spent more than a week aboard ship traveling to a new life? How long had these families planned, sacrificed, and prepared for this moment as they watched Boston come into view? In fact, my own second-great-grandparents came across the Atlantic on that same SS Canopic eleven years before the photograph above was taken.

And later records will tell us where they intended to settle and what they did for occupations. To learn more about the immigrant experience for my ancestors, I first came across the website of the Ellis Island foundation. So much is available about the Ellis Island experience in New York , which is important to me too. My four-year-old grandfather, his parents, and younger brother all came through Ellis Island in Each had a room equipped for immigrant inspections, which were carried out by federal US immigration officials.

These inspections could be quite daunting. Like an immigration checkpoint today, the public was not allowed in the inspecting room or even on the docks.

Dorothy Whipple in United States Index of Gravestones, Dorothy Perkins (born Whipple) in The Boston Transcript - July 5

This was designed to prevent the coaching of arriving immigrants. While immigrants awaited the entry inspections, they waited in general waiting rooms, which were segregated according to the class of service by which one arrived. These favored individuals were mostly employees of transfer companies and had a reputation for bilking immigrants out of their money under false pretenses.

Many were representatives of immigrant banks, who helped immigrants coordinate onward travel by converting prepaid travel into valid stateside tickets. Officially, they charged no additional fees for these services.