Galveston: Ellis Island of the South

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Galveston: Ellis Island of the South

By Carol Rust

Contributing Writer

Published: 11.03.09

Europe churned in political and social turmoil in the late 1800s, and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s government was in big trouble. The German emperor’s policies had made enemies abroad, and support at home was deeply shaken.

Stone mason Wilhelm Frederik Muenster did most of his work for the kaiser and could see financial ruin in his future if Wilhelm’s government collapsed, so he boarded the SS Frankfurt in Bremen, Germany, on Oct. 30, 1902. He arrived in Galveston a few weeks later in the frenzy of the city’s rebuilding efforts after the Great Storm of 1900. There was plenty of work for a stone mason.

Muenster’s wife followed a few months later on the same ship, coaxing extra potatoes from the German cooks to help feed her five children. Her oldest, a 6-year-old girl, was the mother of 79-year-old Pete Rygaard of Dickinson, who is the 60-year husband of Mary Lou Blair Rygaard. Her family came to Galveston in 1911 from Alsace-Lorraine, also on the SS Frankfurt.

“My grandparents wanted to come here for the opportunities and a better quality of life,” Rygaard said. “Things were bad in Germany and they’d heard – I guess from other immigrants – that there was a better life here.”

He and Mary Lou are two of the many hundreds of thousands of descendants of immigrants – from Europe, Mexico, South and Central America and Asia – whose first glimpse of America was the flat, bustling port city of Galveston – called “the Ellis Island of the South.”

Galveston’s role as the landing spot and processing point of so many new citizens has almost been lost to history, but visitors to Moody Gardens will soon be able to glimpse into the past and learn about the lives of arriving immigrants through its new exhibit: “Forgotten Gateway: Coming to America through Galveston Island.” The exhibit opens Nov. 21.

“This exhibit is the first of its kind to explore Galveston’s legacy as a port of entry on a national scale,” said John Zendt, Moody Gardens general manager. “We are very excited to have it here on the island and bring to light the little-known yet rich era of Galveston’s history and just how important it was to the growth of Texas and the American Midwest.”

Indeed, many hundreds of thousands of immigrants were processed through Galveston, beginning in 1845, long before Ellis Island opened as a federal immigrant processing center in 1890.

The exhibit puts a face on immigration and focuses on the common ordeals the aspiring Americans contended with: the dangerous journey, establishing a life in a new land with a strange language, maneuvering the bureaucracy of registration, sometimes spending time in the quarantine station, and facing the discrimination of the day.

The multi-faceted exhibit includes personal stories, interactive kiosks, informative media pieces and more than 200 original artifacts and documents, set near the waters that welcomed so many from so many countries.

The Rygaards’ forbearers paid about $15 each for steerage space and were packed into the holds of cargo ships that steamed into Galveston Bay with regularity.

Galveston was not only a check-in station for immigrants but a way station to the entire country. From 1860 to 1900, thousands of miles of railroad tracks were laid from the island to the western and Midwestern United States, and many immigrants found jobs with Houston & Pacific Railroad out of Galveston, establishing homes and lives at points along the rail routes west and north.

The Rygaards’ ancestors settled around Galveston and westward through Texas. Part of Mary Lou’s family lives in San Antonio. Both genealogists, the Rygaards have traced their family roots back hundreds of years in Europe, but they remain fascinated with their journey to America.

Mary Lou has a copy of the ship’s manifest from the trip her grandfather took in 1910, and she took it to San Antonio a few years back to show to her cousin.

“As he was looking at it, he said, ‘Well, I’ll be,’” Mary Lou recalls. “He had found his wife’s grandfather’s name on the list right under the name of his own grandfather.”

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HoustonPBS documentary explores Galveston as an immigration hub

Updated: 11.03.09

HOUSTON – Between 1835 and 1935, more than 200,000 immigrants from all over the world entered the United States through Galveston. Galveston was one of the busiest and wealthiest US immigration ports during that time.

HoustonPBS has produced a 60-minute documentary, Galveston: Gateway on the Gulf, which explores Galveston’s role as a port of entry for successive waves of immigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The show airs Monday, Nov. 16, at 9 p.m. on HoustonPBS/Channel 8.

The documentary, which was produced by Emmy award-winning filmmakers Richard Coberly and Veronica Veerkamp of Windward Media, includes dramatic recreations shot in and around Galveston and interviews with historians and experts. The film shows both the role that Galveston played in Texas immigration and the role that immigrants played in the development of that unique and historically important island community.

“This is the kind of documentary we love to present. The people of this entire area love Galveston and its colorful past, and that past is tied inextricably to immigration. This is a fascinating, warm and surprising story that will have a something for everyone,” says Ken Lawrence Director of Programming at HoustonPBS.

http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/2009/11/...documentary.txt