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Ellis Island’s first immigrant

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with Maureen Peterson, the great-granddaughter of Annie Moore, the first immigrant processed through Ellis Island. Two photos of Moore have surfaced in recent weeks. (Photo of Annie Moore, found in a scrapbook. Courtesy of the family of Annie Moore Schayer)

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KATY CLARK: Annie Moore immigrated to America from Ireland 118 years ago this week.  She was 17 years old. The hard-scrabble existence she then endured in New York was typical of immigrant life at the time.  But Annie Moore was unique in at least one regard.  She was the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island. Now, two photographs of Moore have been uncovered.  The New York Times published one yesterday.  Maureen Peterson is the person who found one of the long lost photos. She’s the great-granddaughter of Annie Moore.  Maureen Peterson is on the phone with us from Ocean Grove, New Jersey.  Maureen, what was your reaction when you found the photo of your great-grandmother?

MAUREEN PETERSON: I was just sitting here saying, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Oh, my God, this photo that we’ve been looking for.”  And my husband, you know, “What?”  And I took the photo out of the album and turned it over and on the back it said, “Mama Shire” which was what family used to call Annie Moore.

CLARK: And Shire was here married name?

PETERSON: Yes.

CLARK: How did you find it?  You’d been looking for a long time.  Where was it?

PETERSON: I knew at least one photo existed. I thought that one of my father’s sisters might have had it. You know, usually photos usually pass down to a daughter more than to a son, but apparently my mother had the photo and had put it in the album and we finally found it after so many years of looking and looking. That was really, you know, an exciting time.

CLARK: The photo you found is the one published in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times. Describe it for us.

PETERSON: Okay, it’s Annie Moore, you know, probably at an older age. She seems to be dressed up for some type of occasion, and she’s standing in front of some kind of a doorway. I believe it might be from one of the old tenements on the East Side.

CLARK: Was she smiling?

PETERSON: Yeah, like kind of like a Mona Lisa type look. You know, not a great big broad grin but, you know, she appears to be dressed up. It didn’t look like everyday dress for somebody like her who was really, you know, poor struggling immigrant with so many children.

CLARK: And as it turns out, two cousins of yours also found a photo of your great-grandmother recently. What does that other picture show?

PETERSON: The other picture is of a younger Annie Moore. It’s a full body photo and she’s sitting and she’s holding a baby on her lap. The baby appears to be about a year old, a little girl. So that photo also said “Mama Shire” on the back, and it was the same handwriting as the one on the back of the photo that I found. It doesn’t say, you know, the name of the child. We’re assuming it was my grandmother because she was the first girl and she was the oldest living child.

CLARK: Well, your great-grandmother Annie Moore died young. She was 49 and had a pretty hard life I understand.

PETERSON: Yes, she had the total of 11 children and six of them died at very young ages like by the age of three, I believe.  Five of them lived to adulthood. The only one of the children that lived to be past 50 was my grandmother, who died at the age of 76.

CLARK: When you were growing up, what kind of family stories did you hear about your great-grandmother?  Were there a lot of things that you guys used to talk about?

PETERSON: Basically, you know, we always heard that she was the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island and that they lived on the Lower East Side.  From what we understand, she had a phenomenal sense of humor, which carried on through the generations. You know, even though they were very poor and had basically nothing, we’re a very close family.

CLARK: What is it that you think is most important that we could be learning from your great-grandmother’s experience?

PETERSON: I think the most important thing is like she came here. You know, they worked really hard. They had a family, kept the family together. Each generation of us has gotten better educated and we now have so many different nationalities involved in the family. There’s Chinese, there’s Dominican, German, Jewish, French.  We’ve just become like a real American family.

CLARK: Maureen Peterson is a great-granddaughter of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island after it opened in 1892. Maureen Peterson, thank you so much.

PETERSON: Okay, thank you.

CLARK: You can see Maureen Peterson’s photo of her great-grandmother at The World dot org.

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