My grandmother told me a similar story, except she was lying.

She claimed that when my grandfather came to meet her at Ellis Island, "they would not let me go with him because they were afraid of white slavery. We said 'It's alright, we are going to be married', so they said 'then get married. Right here, right now.' So, I was married on the dock. I was 14 years old."  
When I found her marriage record, she was married a month after she arrived. It was in Brooklyn, not Ellis Island, (which uses Manhattan certificates), and she was 26 years old.

So, there must have been people who had to get married on the dock. But I doubt my grandmother was one of them.  That generation lied a lot.
--
Peter Cohen
California

You can inquire on the NYC historical records site. The year of his death is not scanned - you can look on their Guide to see what is available for which borough iiin which years, but you'll find it needs to be ordered. Hopefully you have enough info for them to produce something. It could take 8 weeks, keep your order # handy as you may have to inquire re status as time elapses. I retrieved all 4 of my great-grtandparents' death notices, it's a good resource. If any inquiry is under the scanned years, you can download free.

https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/


Mal Blier

Regarding marriage with an Ellis Island address. I found a case where a 26 year old man, accompanied by a 19 year old woman arrived  together from Russia.  She was described as "his intended wife" by the Board of Special Inquiry.  To make sure his intentions were honorable the authorities required them to be married  before they could gain admittance to the U.S. This took place the next day.  The marriage cert from City Hall gives Ellis Island as their address.  

David Rosen
Boston, MA.  

I took a quick look on Ancestry to see how many persons named Sam Kaplan/Caplan there are in Brooklyn in 1950, born about 1892 - and there are about 20 of them. You could check through all those, to see if any might be your great uncle. Looks like you may have to search for all the Samuel listing separately.

Given that you show the children of Sam and Ida to have been born just after 1914, I checked through the NYC marriage records on FamilySearch, using the SteveMorse.org search page for these records. I found the July 1914 marriage certificate of Sam Kaplan and Chaye Paskovet (used the FamilySearch certificate number, then searched through the new NYC digital images using that number:



Ida's original Yiddish name was Chaya, which often was Americanized to Ida. The 1950 census does seem to fit your Sam and Ida, except for the woman's name being Yetta. Perhaps the census taker misheard her name. Or perhaps Ida had died. You could check through the NYC 1949-1965 death index, which is on Ancestry (just google to get to it) to see if you can find Ida. You can also check to see if Sam had died during those years as well.

The marriage certificate is interesting in other ways. It gives Chaya's address as Ellis Island - do you know why she apparently was detained there? Did Sam and Ida/Chaya know each other back in Russia? The marriage took place at City Hall in Manhatten. And Chaya signed her name in Russian.

Good luck with your searching.

Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus