Stacey Thornton asked about Castle Garden. Castle Garden was opened on 1
Aug 1855 on an island off the southwest tip of Manhattan. It was owned
by New York City and was the first official receiving station for
immigrants in the U. S. In 1890 the federal government attempted to take
control of Castle Garden, but the city of New York refused, so on 18
April 1890, Castle Garden was closed.

During the time Castle Garden was open, the U. S. Customs Bureau was in
charge of immigration. The Customs manifests have all been microfilmed
and are available to view at the National Archives, the Family History
Library, and many large city libraries that have genealogical sections.
For the most part, they are NOT indexed (although Ancestry.com is
working on that now).

Hope this is helpful.

Ilene Kanfer Murray
St. Louis, Missouri

Searching: WEISBERG in Vitebsk; ZEITLIN in Minsk

Hi, Belarus-ers,

Just for clarification, Castle Garden is at the
southern tip of Manhattan. Original built 60 feet off
the tip, land-fill in the 1850s made it part of
Manhattan island. One takes the ferry to the Statue
of Liberty/Ellis Island >from this point. It was
originally a fort, a battery, but has been many things
since. I don't think it was large enough to use as an
immigration processing center after 1890 without
expanding into Manhattan proper and that's why the
Federal Government elected to develop Ellis Island.
[Or why New York State and New York City weren't
receptive to the idea.;-)]

Two good web-sites to understand what and where Castle
Garden was/is are:

http://www.nps.gov/cacl/
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/US_nm/ny_castl.htm

I have no commercial interest in GORP nor the National
Parks Service.

Shellie Wiener
San Francisco, CA
[former NY'er]