Americans celebrating Scots roots on the Island of Tears
Alison Campsie looks back at the experiences – and descendants – of those who passed through the gates of New York’s Ellis Island
It was where thousands of Scots set foot on US soil for the first time following the long transatlantic journey to a new life in the New World.
Now the prominent Scots emigrants and their descendants who went on to shape life in New York will be celebrated on Ellis Island, where new arrivals were processed at the giant federal immigration station.
Those who made their mark on city life in the realms of entertainment, politics, business – and even piracy – will be honoured at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration this month,
The event is being staged as part of the annual Tartan Day celebrations that honour the historic links between Scotland and the United States. This year, Sir Billy Connolly will lead a parade in New York to celebrate that shared heritage on Saturday April 6.
Meanwhile, on Ellis Island, more than 50,000 people of Scots descent are due to gather for the exhibition and associated events organised by the Clan Currie Society.
Chairman Robert Currie said: “Scots began emigrating to America in the 17th century and have been influencing life in New York, and further afield, ever since.
“From the White House to countless boardrooms, university lecture halls, hospitals, theatres and business life, Scots have made their mark. Even Uncle Sam, the embodiment of the US Government, was based on an American businessman of Scottish descent.”
By 1790, the US census showed that Scots made up almost 10 per cent of the population of New York.
Between 1892 and 1954, an estimated 500,000 Scots came through Ellis Island and started to
lay down roots stateside. But the first experiences on Ellis Island – known as the Island of Tears given the high emotion felt there – were not always pleasant given the intrusive, and very public, medical examination imposed on new arrivals.
“For many migrants their encounters with officials in the United States resulted in an image of their new homeland as intrusive and repressive,” wrote Angela Mccarthy in Personal Narratives of Irish and Scottish Migration, 1921 to 1965.
The exhibition will look at a wide range of Scots who influenced life in New York, from business magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to actor and club owner Alan Cumming, who was born in Aberfeldy but has long lived in Manhattan.
Others who feature include Christopher Walken, whose mother Rosalie grew up in Easterhouse, Glasgow, and left Scotland for New York in the early 1930s.
Actor and comedian Mickey Rooney, born Joe Yule in Brooklyn in 1920, also features in the exhibition. His father, a Glaswegian, took his son on stage to join his vaudeville act aged just 17, with Rooney going on to star on the silver screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Anthony Quinn and his friend Judy Garland.
Baseball player Bobby Thomson, who was born in Glasgow in 1923 and left for America to join his cabinet maker father as a boy, will also be honoured.
Thomson joined the New York baseball Giants and is best remembered for hitting the game’s most famous home run – the “shot heard ‘round the world” – in a 1951 match against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Also prominent was dancer Martha Graham. Her father, a psychiatrist from Scotland, settled the family in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, with his daughter becoming a pioneer in American modern dance.
Pirate William Kidd will also be remembered. Reportedly born in Greenock in 1645, he was a pirate against the French in the West Indies before travelling to New York to suppress the rebellion of Jacob Leisler, a prominent New York merchant later executed for treason. Kidd was himself executed in 1701.