- Part 2 Correspondence
- 4 Bishop Scalabrini and Archbishop Corrigan (1887–1902)
- 58. Corrigan to Scalabrini New York, August 5, l901
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58. Corrigan to
Scalabrini124
New
York, August 5, l901
Most Reverend and Esteemed Excellency,
The Commissioner of Immigration, a good Catholic,
invites us on Wednesday to visit with him Ellis Island125 or the immigrants’ station and
see their place of landing and other related matters. In fact, two steamships
are due to arrive here on that day, one of them precisely the Italian steamer Il Principe
Tartaro.
Then
we will go to see the port itself and any other site at will.
Should
Your Excellency wish to please this good Commissioner it would be necessary to
be at the Barge Office126 at
exactly eleven o’clock
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a.m. or a little earlier. In that case, I
would pick up Your Excellency on Roosevelt
Street at ten and on the way back we could bless
the Immigration Home.127
The
Commissioner also invites us to have lunch with him on the boat.
I
hope Your Excellency can accept this invitation and if I do not hear advice to
the contrary I will meet you on Wednesday at ten o’clock.
In
the meantime I am, Your Excellency
Your most Humble and devoted servant,
Michael Augustine, Archbishop
124 AGS EB 01–07 (Original). Bishop
Scalabrini had arrived in New York
on August 3. As he reported to his Secretary in a telegraphic style:” Meeting
at sea with two boats. An English-language newspaper called it a royal
encounter. Addresses, flowers.... The Parish (of St. Joachim) was all decorated
with colored little flags... The Archbishop came immediately to see me and the
encounter was most cordial..” AGS AN 01–01, f.36, Scalabrini to Mangot, New York,
August 4, 1901.
125 Ellis Island is in New York Bay and served for the processing of immigrants
on the part of the American Federal Government from January 1892 to 1954. Federal
agents controlled documents and the health condition of the immigrants and
questioned them and decided their admission to or rejection from the United States
according to the existing laws. On the Island
was a hospital, dormitories, refectories for the immigrants. Now it is a
national landmark and houses the Immigration
Museum. Bishop Scalabrini
accepted the proposal of Archbishop Corrigan. He wrote to his Secretary: “On
Wednesday 7th (of August) together with the Archbishop I visited the splendid
shelters of the other nationalities. Then we went to the Island
where we witnessed the landing of 650 Italians, the medical checks, the
questioning. The General Commissioner kept us for lunch. After, by steamer he
led us to see the beauties of the magnificent panorama of the great cities of New York, Brooklyn, Newark
and New Jersey(sic), that extend in front the
waters of the sea and of the Hudson.
It is something that stuns; 4 million persons, a country of feverish activity,
with railroads in the air, etc. Here truly ferment the new and grand ideas.”
AGS AN 01–01 f.38, Scalabrini to Mangot,
New York, August 9, 1901.
126 The Barge Office was the bureau
of the United States Government for the reception of immigrants landing in New York. Opened in 1875,
when the Federal Government took over control of immigration, it lasted to 1891
when it was replaced by Ellis Island.
Charitable organizations interested in helping the immigrants had their agents
at the Barge Office.
127 The Immigration Home was a
building at n. 219 Bleeker Street,
Manhattan, with a dozen beds, a
kitchen and dining room, bought by Father G. Gambera in his effort to
reorganize the St. Raphael’s Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants
established by Father Pietro Bandini in New
York in 1891. The home was blessed by Bishop
Scalabrini on August 9, 1901. On the history of the St. Raphael’s Society in America,
cf. Edward E. Stibili, The Italian St.
Raphael Society for the Protection of the Italian Immigrants in the United States,
in Gianfausto Rosoli, Scalabrini tra
vescchio e Nuovo Mondo. Rome:
Centro Studi Emigrazione, 1989, pp. 469–480.
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