Anna "Annie" Moore was the first immigrant to the United States to pass through the Ellis Island facility in New York Harbour.
Moore arrived from County Cork, Ireland aboard the steamship Nevada on January 1, 1892. It was reported that her arrival was on her 15th birthday, but records in Ireland reveal that her birthday was in May and she was actually 17. Her brothers, Anthony and Philip, who journeyed with her, had just turned 15 and 12, respectively. As the first person to be processed at the newly opened facility, she was presented with an American $10 gold piece. Between 1820 and 1920, more than 4 million people left Ireland bound for the Port of New York and a new life in America.
Her parents, Matthew and Julia Moore, had come to the United States in 1888 and were living at 32 Monroe Street in Manhattan. She married a son of German immigrants Joseph Augustus Schayer, an employee at Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market, with whom she had at least eleven children. She died of heart failure on December 6, 1924[1] and is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens. Her previously unmarked grave was identified in August 2006. On October 11, 2008, a dedication ceremony was held at Calvary which celebrated the unveiling of a marker for her grave, a Celtic Cross made of Irish Blue Limestone.
A woman named "Annie Moore" who died near Fort Worth, Texas in 1924 had long been thought to be the one whose arrival marked the beginning of Ellis Island. Further research, however, established that the Annie Moore in Texas was born in Illinois.
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