On the first day of
January 1892
They opened Ellis
Island and they let the people through
And the first to cross
the threshold of that isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from
Ireland who was all of 15 years.
Isle of hope, isle of
tears
Isle of freedom, isle
of fears
But it’s not they isle
you left behind
That isle of hunger,
isle of pain
Isle you’ll never see
again
But the isle of home is
always on your mind.
In a little bag, sur
carried all her past and history
And her dreams for the
future in the land of liberty
And courage is your
passport when your old world disappears
But there’s no future
in the past when you’re 15years.
When they closed down
Ellis Island in 1943
17 million people had
come there for sanctuary
And in the springtime
when I came here and stepped onto its piers
I thought of how it
must have been when you’re 15 years.
Annie later married a
bakery clerk and had 11 children, only five of whom survived to adulthood. She
died of heart failure in 1924 at the age of 47 and was buried with six of her
children in an unmarked plot at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. She had the typical
hardscrabble immigrant life. So beautiful.
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