Using the GG Archives in the Classroom
Reaching students in elementary, middle and high school is often a difficult task, especially when faced with daunting tasks of learning facts and teaching to the test. GG Archives is not a collection of government records. To the contrary, our focus has been on ephemera from the 1880s through the mid-1950s that primarily pertains to transatlantic migration and immigration including steamships, passenger lists, steerage contracts, period articles, extracts from historical books and more.
Planning a lesson on the topic of "Immigration" can utilize many materials from the GG Archives to peak the students' interest.
As an introduction, we recommend using photographs of early immigrants along with voyage contracts, Immigrant Inspection Cards, Immigrant ID Tags, a Steerage Passenger List along with reading from period articles about the Steerage Experience and the Ellis Island inspection procedures.
Example of an Immigrant and Steerage Passenger Inspection Card from 1916
Reverse Side of Immigrant and Steerage Passenger Inspection Card with notion of Vaccination and the requirement to keep this card on their person to avoid being detained at Quarantine.
Third Class Passenger Inspection Card from 1923
Outer Garment Immigrant ID Tag worn by the Immigrant who also possessed the Inspection Card above.
A Family of Immigrants on board the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in 1910.
Immigrants on the SS Meteor of the Hamburg America Line circa 1905
Voyage Contract for a 19 year old Swedish Immigrant from 1914
Rare Steerage Passenger List from 1894. Steerage passengers were not considered to be repeat customers so souvenir passenger lists were rarely prepared. The above passenger list from the Norddeutscher Lloyd SS Lahn was the exception, rather than the rule.
Late 1800s Notice to White Star Line Agencies to Not Book any more Steerage Passengers on the SS Germanic. The rate at the time was £5.
- Read The Immigration Question.
- What do the views expressed tell us about attitudes among Americans to immigrants by the late nineteenth century?
Dr. Jenner Using the Cowpox Vaccine that ultimately allowed safe passage for immigrants to the new world (and why they required Vaccination Cards).
Immigration Collage, Free to use from the GG Archives. Need a High Resolution Image for a Poster? Contact us, it's Free to Schools and Non-Profits.
Links to GG Archives Pages for more Information
- 1923-EllisIslandHistoricalDocuments
From 1892 to 1954 Millions of immigrants were processed through Ellis Island. This is a collection of documents that pertain to a 65 year-old Lithuanian immigrant, Barbara Vitkiene, who arrived at Ellis Island in 1923 including the Immigrant Inspection Card, Immigrant ID Tag and passenger manifest extracts and images. - 1914-04-10-SteeragePassengerContract
This is a passenger contract for a voyage from Gothenburg, Sweden to Boston, Massachusetts for Alfred Person, 19 years of age, traveling alone. He paid SEK 178.50 for Steerage / third class accommodations aboard an unnamed Cunard Line steamship. His voyage would have taken him from Gothenburg to Hull, England, typically on a small feeder vessel that served the Scandinavian coastal cities, where he would have boarded a train across England to Liverpool. At Liverpool, he would have boarded one of the larger Cunard ocean liners for the voyage on to Boston, Massachusetts. - 1901-InspectionOfImmigrantsAtEllisIsland
The methods of inspection are described at length by various witnesses connected with the inspection service at New York. When a vessel approaches the harbor it is boarded by 1 or 2 inspectors, who examine the cabin passengers. These men are confronted with 100 or 150 passengers at a time, and they have an hour and a half for an examination covering the period of time from touching at quarantine and landing at the dock. - 1911-InspectionOfImmigrants
At Ellis Island, they seem to me to largely cultivate their powers of observation and to instantly recognize the clinical picture presented by the immigrant before them. The photographs I took there tell their own tale, but the following narration gives an idea of the details of inspection. - 1894-08-28-PassengerList-Lahn
Steerage Passenger List for the SS Lahn of the North German Lloyd, Departing 28 August 1894 from Bremen to New York, Commanded by Captain H. Hellmers. - Special Collections
The Special Collections section of the Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives includes a wide variety of original immigration and other historical documents from the 19th and early 20th century, a rich source of information for immigration research (primarily transatlantic westbound immigration). Explore the wide variety of documents and other materials they offer, including immigrant documents, vaccination cards, luggage contracts, health certificates, steamship tickets, and vintage brochures, menus and postcards ... - Steerage Class: The Immigrant's Journey
The Gjenvick-Gjønvik (GG) Archives hosts an extensive online collection of historical documents from the 1800s through 1954, many of them focused on the immigration experience. This collection of articles focuses on the accommodations and living conditions of immigrants in Steerage (or Tween Decks) and Third Class - Daily Life Aboard a Steamer
Discover what life was like on board the steamship, from provisioning to housekeeping, through this online collection of illustrated historical articles from the 1870s through the 1950s. The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives has also included articles on steamship captains, ship cargo and carrying capacity, stowaways, steamship crews, and even sanitation, as well as on transatlantic ships and voyages. - Processing the Steerage Passenger at Ellis Island
To the steerage a new world is dawning and a week or more of an earthly purgatory ending. Dr. Steiner, the eminent immigration authority who has carried his gospel of kindness into many a steerage, himself acknowledges that often he has tried to overcome the deep despair of the steerage by reminding its people that though it seems like hell, there is a heaven beyond. - Dr. Edward Jenner became famous for preventing smallpox by vaccinating a boy with pus from a milkmaid’s cowpox blister. But Dr. Jenner was not the first; he got the credit because he successfully repeated the vaccination 23 times and published his results.
Did you know...
The National Park Service offers links to a number of free websites where you can search for passenger arrival records (manifests). Some are very general and some can be very specific. Here are some that [NPS] have found particularly helpful-and they are totally free... including ggarchives.com for having "One of the largest collections of historical documents from the 1800s through 1954 with concentrations in Steamship and Ocean Liner documents and photographs, passenger lists, U.S. Navy Archives and additional materials covering World Wars I and II, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Immigration documents from Ellis Island, Castle Garden and other Immigration Stations."
National Park Service, "Ellis Island: Finding Arrival Records Online." http://www.nps.gov/elis/learn/education/finding-arrival-records-online.htm Accessed 2015-06-06
