William Williams Documents Ellis Island Immigrants
were sometimes ignored Roosevelt demanded improvements in all these areas Williams arrived determined to do just that and more Serving as Commissioner In his position as head of the Ellis Island immigration processing facility Williams had a double role He had to get the facility in proper working order making it as efficient as possible as workers processed the thousands of immigrants who graced its doorway every day He also had to ensure his employees followed and enforced immigration Williams played a key role in the US immigration system at a time when the country was welcoming huge numbers of immigrants 6
laws established by the US government which changed often and were becoming more restrictive in limiting who could enter the country Williams quickly got to work setting the nation’s leading immigration center on a path to improvement He planned to tackle the corruption and other problems that existed He would leave his mark on the nation’s first federal immigration center and affect the lives of many of the people who passed through the site Williams was meticulous He kept a record of his time at Ellis Island writing in a journal and saving newspaper clippings He collected and preserved dozens of photographs of Ellis Island and the newly arrived immigrants there Many of the photos were taken by the clerks who worked at the site Some photos such as images taken by professional photographer Edwin Levick captured the island’s grounds and facilities Others were portraits of immigrants Many of these were taken by Augustus F Sherman a clerk who worked at Ellis Island and one of the many people Williams supervised as commissioner The subjects in Sherman’s photographs were young and old male and female They were often clad in traditional clothing from their 7
INTO THE LENS WILLIAM WILLIAMS William Williams was born in New London Connecticut on June 2 1862 He came from an upper-class family that had a strong history in North America dating back to before the founding of the United States A great-great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side Jonathan Edwards was a prominent minister Edwards was the leading theologian of British American Puritanism and played a role in the Great Awakening a religious movement that took place in the mid-1700s Williams had two prominent family members on his father’s side as well Robert Williams a Puritan helped settle Deerfield Massachusetts William Williams signed the Declaration of Independence as a representative from Connecticut Williams began college in Germany but then enrolled at Yale University in his junior year After graduating in 1884 he attended Harvard Law School Williams got a degree in law in 1888 and went to work as a lawyer In the 1890s before becoming commissioner of Ellis Island Williams worked as a corporate lawyer in New York City where he had his own practice He also held a position as a lawyer with the federal government negotiating with the United Kingdom over the Bering Sea That job had him working in Washington DC and in Paris France He returned to his New York law practice next holding this position until becoming commissioner of Ellis Island in 1902 Williams had gained extensive experience in legal and government matters before coming to Ellis Island 8
homelands All the photos give a glimpse into what Ellis Island was like in the early 1900s as people from across the ocean sought to make the United States their new home Joy and Anguish Over the years Ellis Island would become a symbol of hope for those who arrived by ship in New York Harbor But it was also a site that caused fear and anxiety Entry was not guaranteed Many arrivals had to submit to physical and mental examination Depending on the results immigrants could be denied entry into the United States Sometimes this meant they simply had to wait to overcome an illness or be claimed by someone already in the country But some arrivals were deported and sent back to their homelands their hopes dashed 9 AUGUSTUS F SHERMAN Augustus F Sherman was the source of many portraits in Williams’s collection Sherman was born in Pennsylvania in 1865 He moved to New York City in 1884 and began working as a clerk at Ellis Island in 1892 He advanced to senior clerk and sometimes served on boards of special inquiry These boards heard individual cases of detainees listening to witnesses and deciding if the detainees would be allowed into the country Sherman was a self-taught photographer He may have started photography as a result of knowing Terence V Powderly who served as commissioner general of immigration from 1897 to 1902 Because of his position as clerk at Ellis Island Sherman had access to the site and the thousands of people who arrived there every week Sherman died on February 16 1925 In the 1960s Mary Sherman Peters his niece donated the remainder of the photos by her uncle to the American Immigration Museum This facility is now called the Ellis Island Museum of Immigration
