Castle Garden, Prior to Ellis Island – Irish Priest Observes the “Runners”
When America thinks of immigration, two images immediately spring to mind: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This is hardly surprising, given the fact that upwards of 16 million immigrants passed the Statue as they entered New York Harbor on their way to the inspection station at Ellis Island. One was surely a symbol of hope, the other a place of dread. Yet for the great majority of the millions of Irish who came to America, neither Lady Liberty nor Ellis Island played a role in their experience.
The reason is simple enough: Most Irish immigrants arrived before the Statue (1886) and Ellis (1892) were built. The great symbol of Irish migration to America stands only a half mile away from these landmarks at the tip of Manhattan Island: Castle Garden.
Originally constructed in 1811 as a fort named Castle Clinton (named in honor of Mayor DeWitt Clinton, a descendent of Irish immigrants from County Longford), it was converted in the 1820s into a public venue for celebrations, exhibitions, and entertainment. Thousands of New Yorkers
routinely thronged to the Castle for gala welcoming ceremonies for arriving dignitaries – from President Andrew JACKSON in the 1830s to Irish patriot Thomas Francis MEAGHER in the 1850s. By the mid-1840s the popularity of the site had grown such that a six-thousand-seat opera house named Castle Garden was constructed over the fort. In 1855, Castle Garden abruptly commenced its third unique historical phase, that of immigrant receiving center. Over
the next thirty-five years more than eight million foreign arrivals were processed there (1.8 million Irish), a total second only to its successor, Ellis Island.
Two things distinguished Castle Garden (and its counterparts in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere) from Ellis Island. First, there was no rigorous inspection regimen (though immigrants were given quick health checks during periodic epidemic scares) . Second, there were no measures taken to protect newly arrived immigrants from the wily con men who prowled Lower Manhattan in search of easy prey. Sadly, these men used their ethnic
credentials–a good Irish accent, or better still, the ability to speak Irish–to ensnare their fellow Hibernians. As one Irish priest observed in the 1850s: “The moment he landed his luggage was pounced upon by two runners, one seizing the box of tools, the other confiscating the clothes.
The future American citizen assured his obliging friends that he was quite capable of carrying his own luggage; but no, they should relieve him–the stranger, and guest of the Republic–of that trouble. Each was in the interest of a different boarding-house, and each insisted that the young
Irishman with the red head should go with him … Not being able to oblige both gentlemen, he could oblige only one; and as the tools were more valuable than the clothes, he followed in the path of the gentleman who had secured that portion of the ‘plunder’ … the two gentleman wore very pronounced green neck-ties, and spoke with a richness of accent that denoted special if not conscientious cultivation; and on his (the Irishman’s) arrival at the boarding-house, he was cheered with the announcement that its proprietor was from ‘the ould counthry,’ and loved every sod of it, God bless it.”
— Excerpts, “1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American
History,” Edward T. O’Donnell (2002).
Irish History and Genealogy 
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