Castle Garden Immigration: A Genealogist’s Guide

Before Ellis Island even opened its doors, immigrants arriving in New York City passed through Castle Garden. Now known as Castle Clinton National Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Castle Garden served as the primary gateway for over 8.5 million newcomers between 1855 and 1890.

What follows is a look into the layered history of Castle Garden—from military fort to entertainment hub to immigration depot—and the broader story of immigration into New York City during the 19th century. Along the way, we’ll look at key records, shifting policies, and what genealogists can learn from the generations who passed through Castle Garden’s gates.

In This Article

• Before Castle Garden: Early Immigration in New York City 1819–1854
• What Was Castle Garden? 1808–1854: Military fort to Entertainment Center
• Castle Garden: Immigration Depot (1855–1890)
• Castle Garden: 1890 to Today
• Finding Your Ancestors at Castle Garden

Before Castle Garden: Early Immigration in New York City 1819-1854

Before Castle Garden opened its doors in 1855, immigration in New York City was anything but organized. Starting in 1819, customs officials worked along various docks throughout the harbor, recording basic information about arriving ships, passengers, and ports of origin.

But as immigrant numbers swelled—particularly with the rise of European migration in the mid-nineteenth century—so did reports of scams, fraud and exploitation targeting new arrivals.

A New York State commission in 1847 called attention to these abuses, prompting the state to lease a pier at the end of Hubert Street in lower Manhattan for use as a centralized processing site in 1848. That effort didn’t last long: nearby residents protested, forcing the state to find a new solution.

The answer came in the form of Castle Garden, which was leased by the New York State Commission of Emigration and officially opened 3 August 1855. For the next 35 years, it served as the nation’s first immigration landing depot and the primary point of entry for millions seeking a new life in America.

Passenger lists and indexes to early arrivals prior to 1855, regardless of point of arrival in New York City, are at the National Archives as:

• “Index to Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, NY, 1820-1846” (M261), searchable at FamilySearch
• “Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, NY, 1820–1897” (M237), accessible through FamilySearch and Ancestry.com
• “Registers of Vessels Arriving at the Port of New York from Foreign Ports, 1789–1919” (M1066), available at FamilySearch

What Was Castle Garden? 1808–1854: Military Fort to Entertainment Center

Construction on what would become Castle Garden began in 1808, when the U.S. military built the Southwest Battery (sometimes called the “West Battery”) on an artificial island just off the coast of Manhattan. Completed by 1811, the fort was part of a bigger effort to increase New York City’s coastal defenses in anticipation of war with Britain.

By 1812, it was garrisoned and equipped with 28 cannons, ready to protect the harbor from potential attacks. However, the fort didn’t see combat during the War of 1812.

After the war, Southwest Battery was renamed Castle Clinton in honor of the New York City mayor (and later New York governor) DeWitt Clinton. It was repurposed into administrative headquarters for the Army and served as the Third District Military Headquarters through 1812, then was a quarter-master depot until 1823.

Castle Clinton fell out military use. And as public enthusiasm for green space in the city grew, the fort was ceded to New York City and became known as Castle Garden in 1824.

Over the next three decades, it became one of New York’s premier entertainment venues, hosting concerts, exhibitions, operas and even fireworks. One of the fort’s first events, in September 1824, was a celebration attended by 6,000 honoring General Lafayette during his “Grand Tour” of the United States. The fort also hosted political figures, including US presidents Andrew Jackson, John Tyler and James K. Polk.

In 1835, Samuel Morse demonstrated his revolutionary telegraph machine at Castle Garden. A roof was added in the 1845, turning the fort into a structural theater venue. In 1850, Castle Garden was the venue for the American concert debut of Jenny Lind (“the Swedish Nightingale”).

New York City officials were planning to expand the nearby Battery Park (now simply called “The Battery”) by 1848 and added landfill around Castle Garden, connecting it to Manhattan’s shoreline.

Castle Garden: Immigration Depot (1855–1890)

By the mid-19th century, the U.S. was experiencing an increasing number of emigrants landing on its shores. Millions arrived from Europe, many of them landing in New York City as their first stop in America.

Officials recognized the need for a formal processing system to manage the growing number of new arrivals. Thus, in 1855, Castle Garden was leased by the New York State Commission of Emigration. It opened on 3 August 1855 as the nation’s first formal immigration landing depot.

New York State and New York City collaborated on record-keeping. Unfortunately, the official passenger arrival documents were lost in a fire on Ellis Island in 1897. Researchers have to use the substitute customs lists instead.

Castle Garden itself burned on 30 July 1876, causing some city officials to propose closing the immigration center and restoring Castle Garden as a public entertainment venue. However, the state government contracted reconstruction and reopened the depot later that year.

In the early years of its history, Castle Garden had its customs officers inspect passengers’ baggage on the dock. A Barge Office opened in 1879 as a possible replacement landing and inspection point, but was turned into a storage area shortly after.

Closure

Roughly two out of every three immigrants to the U.S. between 1855 and 1890 (approximately 8.5 million people) passed through Castle Garden. But the depot was not equipped well enough to handle the sheer number of arrivals.

Underfunded, overcrowded and with little resources, Castle Garden developed a reputation for its shortcomings. Overcrowding and understaffing led to scenes of confusion and congestion that became infamous in their own right. The chaos survives in the Yiddish word Kesselgarden (meaning a confusing, noisy situation).

Worse still, the depot became notorious for the solicitors who waited outside to take advantage of newcomers. In 1873, to protect new arrivals, the Erie Railway chartered a ferry directly from Castle Garden to the New Jersey railroad terminals to provide safer passage out of the city for immigrants starting their new lives beyond New York.

By the 1880s, dysfunction at Castle Garden had reached a tipping point. Battles, political tension and physical challenges shaped arrivals’ experiences in ways that had repercussions for the depot’s future.

Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1882, which imposed a head tax on non-citizens and restricted entry for certain groups. The new legislation sparked a messy jurisdictional dispute between city, state and federal governments over who actually had the authority to enforce immigration policy at Castle Garden (and who was in charge of funding it). Federal laws were often ignored by state officials, who claimed it was not part of their official duties. The result was a tangled web of mismanagement, inaction and confusion for the immigrants caught in the middle.

The state senate’s finance committee investigated Castle Garden and the wider immigration department. In a 4 May 1883 memorandum, then-Governor Grover Cleveland reported that:

“The present management of this very important department is a scandal and reproach to civilization … the money of the State is apparently expended with no regard to economy, the most disgraceful dissensions prevail among those having the matter in charge, barefaced jobbery has been permitted, and the poor emigrant who looks to the institutions for protection, finds that his helplessness and forlorn condition afford the readily seized opportunity for imposition and swindling.”

By the end of the decade, overcrowding threatened collapse, and stories circulated of arrivals being mistreated by immigration officials. Making matters worse, the state’s Emigration Commissioners laid off many depot employees in September 1889 due to declining income.

The federal government had had enough. In February 1890, it informed New York officials that it would take over immigrant-processing within two months. They planned to construct a new processing center at across New York Harbor on a former military base at Ellis Island.

Castle Garden officially closed its doors on 18 April 1890; in its final years, it processed 364,086 immigrants. By year’s end, the building was transferred back to the city.

For a deep dive into this era Castle Garden As An Immigrant Depot, 1855–1890 by Dr. George J. Svejda (National Park Service, 1968).

TIP: The Barge Office was used as New York’s immigrant-processing center between 18 April 1890 and 31 December 1891, while construction on Ellis Island was completed. It was again used as the processing center between 20 June 1897 and 16 December 1900 after fire destroyed much of the building at Ellis Island.

Castle Garden: 1890 to Today

Castle Garden found new life just a few years after closing, when it was converted into the New York City Aquarium (1896–1941). The structure was extensively altered and the roof raised several stories, though the original masonry of the fort remained. The Battery was also extended into the Hudson River adjacent to the site.

The aquarium closed in anticipation of a new Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. What followed was a familiar pattern: years of bureaucratic back-and-forth between city, state, and federal agencies about whether the structure should be demolished. Ultimately it was saved in 1949 through intense advocacy work of various citizens groups. The Castle Clinton National Monument was formally dedicated on 25 October 1950.

At the time it was formally transferred over to the federal government in 1949, only the outer walls remained completely intact. Castle Clinton underwent years of restoration and renovations from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Nearly 200 years after being used by the military, Castle Clinton was once again pressed into service. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was occupied by the National Guard for six weeks. When the site reopened to the public on 22 October 2001 (with the Statue of Liberty reopening in December), it resumed its role as a funnel point: this time not for immigrants, but for tourists. The National Park Service erected a temporary tent with body scanners at Castle Clinton, where visitors bound for Liberty and Ellis Islands underwent security screens.

Just as in its earlier incarnations, Castle Clinton struggled to handle the crowds. Wait times stretched past an hour, echoing the depot’s long-standing reputation for congestion and confusion.

As genealogists trace names and dates through Castle Garden records, Castle Clinton itself reminds us: history is not just remembered—it is relived, reshaped and, sometimes, rerouted through a security tent.

Finding Your Ancestors at Castle Garden

Passenger lists

Though a fire on Ellis Island in 1897 destroyed ship passenger lists from the Castle Garden era, researchers can still turn to customs lists. These lists (which span from 1820 to 1890) were kept elsewhere and contain much of the same information as the lost records.

Customs lists were printed by the US government but filled out by the ship’s crew, then handed over to Castle Garden officials during processing. Because the records were created mainly for statistical tracking, they contain fairly minimal details:

• Names of the ship and its captain
• Port of departure
• Date and port of arrival
• Each passenger’s name, sex, age, occupation and nationality

Sample customs list

1. The ship’s captain or master filled in the departure port (#3) and signed the customs list to verify its accuracy.

2. The ship’s name: Scythia. To find information on ships, search Ancestry.com’s “Passenger Ships and Images” database.

3. The location that the ship departed for Castle Garden. In this case, the Scythia left Liverpool for New York.

4. The date of arrival at New York: 2 May 1877.

5. The list of passengers’ names, which may have been created as tickets were purchased or after the ship left the departure port.

6. Ages of each passenger. The forms asked for the age in years and months, but usually months were omitted.

7. Gender of each passenger.

8. The occupations of each passenger or, if applicable (and without an occupation) relationship to a person an individual was traveling with. For example Mary, traveling with Matthew Nicholson, is indicated to be his “wife.”

9. This column includes important information that points to the person’s native country. It may refer to the country of birth or to the home country at the time of their immigration.

10. Country of which the passengers wanted to become “inhabitants.” If the passengers wanted to immigrate to the U.S., this would be declared here.

11. Part of the ship that the passengers were located. In this case, these passengers were all traveling in steerage. Usually in customs lists, names were grouped by cabin class.

Online access

Find customs lists free at FamilySearch or through the subscription site Ancestry.com. Steve Morse’s One-Step Webpages has easy-to-use search forms for the lists on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

Castle Garden records are also available through the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. Note that ancestors who arrived between 1855 and 1890 did not come through Ellis Island; rather, the site operated by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation also includes pre-Ellis Island arrival records.  

Additional records

New York Emigrant Savings Bank records: Many immigrants (including thousands of Irish arrivals) opened accounts with the Emigrant Savings Bank, established in 1850 by members of the Irish Emigrant Society. These records are held by the New York Public Library’s Archives & Manuscripts Division as “Emigrant Savings Bank records,” portions of which have been digitized and are available on their website for free. A more complete digitized collection is searchable on Ancestry.com as “New York, U.S., Emigrant Savings Bank Records, 1850-1883.”

Naturalization records: One settled in the U.S., many immigrants applied for citizenship. Declarations of intent, petitions for naturalization, and other documents may list ports and dates of arrival, plus information about the immigrant’s homeland. Note that, before 1907, immigrants should apply for naturalization in any court—but not necessarily the one closest to them.

Local and ethnic newspapers: Many immigrant communities published arrival announcements, job postings and offers for assistance that referenced Castle Garden by name.

Resources

Books

Castle Garden As An Immigrant Depot, 1855-1890 by Dr. George J. Svejda (National Park Service, 1968). Available online at the National Park Service.

The Battery : the story of the adventurers, artists, statesmen, grafters, songsters, mariners, pirates, guzzlers, Indians, thieves, stuffed-shirts, turn-coats, millionaires, inventors, poets, heroes, soldiers, harlots, bootlicks, nobles, nonentities, burghers, martyrs, and murderers who played their parts during full four centuries on Manhattan Island’s tip by Rodman Gilder (Houghton Mifflin, 1936).Available online at Ancestry.com.

They Came in Ships: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor’s Arrival Record (3rd Edition) by John Philip Colletta.

Websites

The Battery. “History.”

National Park Service. “Castle Clinton: History & Culture.”

National Register of Historic Places. Nomination and Program Form for New York SP Castle Clinton National Monument.

New York Preservation Archive Project. “Castle Clinton.”

The Seaport Museum. “Castle Clinton.”­­

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A version of this article was posted online in July 2025.

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