Wards Island Refugees

The Shock of My Research

Please read "Castle Garden: The Forgotten Gateway" by Barry Moreno before reading this page. The link is in this site.

After reading the article "Castle Garden: The Forgotten Gateway" it made perfect sense to my why it existed, however, I wasn't completely convinced about its perfect function to help immigrants because of what I had previously stumbled upon.

The night before I found the above article I was heavy into research, trying to find the family of another genealogy project. I thought I had found the family for "our" William Ellis until I found another census that meant our William Ellis wasn't from that family, because I had found "their" William Ellis. I hope that makes sense to you. Anyway, that meant I had to search even more to find the real family of our William Ellis. By the way, when researching I use the terms "ours" and "not ours or theirs" when tracking people. It's just easier that way.

Anyway, I was hard at the research, trying to find William Ellis, born 1842 in NY, and came across a census that looked promissing. However, I immediately realized that I must've stumbled upon a census for an orphanage after going through page after page of children. BUT, because the census taker used very swirly writing, it was impossible to read where or what the place name was. After paging closer to the front of the census for that ward, which by the way was the 1850 New York Ward 12, New York, New York census, I was finally able to make out the words, "Wards Island Refugees". On that page I found matrons, doctors, laborers, et al, people who would be in charge of and in support of an orphanage.

All that might not sound very impressive, but I paged through over 150 pages of 25 names per page. Do the math. It was over 3,700 children. At first I was going to save the pages but 150 plus is just too many. And the darn census taker really did a job on the names. Most of them are nearly illegible! I have names I use for people like that, but I won't repeat them here. Suffice it to say that the census taker obvioulsy didn't care one iota about the children at Wards Island.

Now then, if you've read the articles about the orphans, orphanages, asylums, orphan trains, et al, you should realize that it appeared that those facilities were sheltering children who were mostly born in America. Not always, but mostly. It's not like the immigrants brought their children to America to abandon them. Granted disease did cause some of that to happen, but it certainly wasn't the norm. And if you've read that article about "Castle Garden" it should have left you with a warm cozy feeling about the righteousness of such a place.

— BUT —

What in the hell was going on that over 3,700 children were housed at Wards Island on that particular census date? And I would hazard a guess that 95% of them were born in America based on what I saw. I haven't found a thing about housing children at Wards Island, other that nice little blurb in "Castle Garden" and I provide the paragraph here:

"In 1848, the State Board of Emigration Commissioners, created by the New York legislature in 1847, established a hospital and other buildings on Wards Island, a 255-acre island in the East River. The most important of these buildings were the Verplanck State Emigrant hospital, capable of holding 350 patients; the Refuge building for destitute women and children; and the New Barracks building for destitute male aliens."

That all sounds well and good, but 3,700 children is a far cry from a holding capacity of 350 patients, or a Refugee building for destitue women and children. And, on the census pages, none of those children were listed with families. There weren't any families listed!!! Just children!!! Page after page of young children from birth to 17, but mostly in the range of 3 to 12 years old. Was Wards Island also used as a mass orphanage, or could that be called a holding camp, housing masses of children? Was Wards Island what prompted the eventual Orphan Train project that began a mere 3 to 4 years later (1853/1854). Was Wards Island what prompted the evacuation of thousands of children to rural America that was in need of cheap labour?

I should probably calm down for a minute before continuing, but it's hard. If any of you have cared to google my name, Morgan Chai, you will find that I'm an author, and two of my best selling books are about children . . . about how they are precieved as a commody in the world of human trafficking. I dare not continue for the moment. You can read more about me at www.furtherbeyond.com. And both books, "Retrieved" and "Stolen Lives" were written based on my own true experiences.

I'm back. I needed a break. But I can't get Wards Island Refugees out of my mind. I will continue doing more research about it, and I think I will obtain those hundreds of pages of census records just to prove their existence. If any of you have ANY information at all about Wards Island, or stories, etc, please send them for posting to this website. I will not use your personal identifying information, unless you specifically tell me to do so.

If this page has upset you in any way, I apologize, but the truth has to be known. During the Orphan Train epic, hundreds of thousands of children were shipped out of major cities, and God only knows where else, and of course, many of them were given a better life. But to hear stories from only a few who had good experiences must make you realize that the rest didn't have a good life. They had to have been horribly scared and traumatized by what happened to them, and probably felt, or still feel that no one ever cared about their plight to survive childhood. I care! And I want to know more, and I want the truth to be shared. It's not about judging what happened, but more about understanding it, and then helping the survivors and their generations who followed.

It angers me to no end to see child abuse in any way, shape, or form, and those children who didn't get placed in loving families were in fact abused. But again, it's in the past. Now is a time for healing and understanding found only through truth and knowledge.

For now, it's back to the research grind.

Thank you for visiting this site, and feel free to email us about the Orphan Trains or genealogy related information.