In Their Footsteps: Mapping Migration of Ottoman Greeks to the United States
In Their Footsteps Project
In Their Footsteps
Between 1892 and 1954, Ellis Island served as one of the United States’ two main migration hubs, processing approximately 12 million migrants, including 1 million in 1907 alone. This accelerated migration rate did not persist, however. In 1924, the US Congress ratified one of the most restrictive migration policies in its history, second only to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Immigration Act of 1924 restricted migration by establishing a 1% quota for every nationality residing in the US as of the 1890 Census. This stipulation severely impacted migration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which at the time was reeling from a decade of social upheaval caused by wars between 1912-1922 involving Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, the Ottoman Empire, and Serbia.
These wars changed the borders of the Ottoman Empire, leading to its demise, and the displacement of one of its peoples, the Ottoman Greeks, is the focus of the Ottoman Greeks of the US Mapping Initiative. The Ottoman Greeks of the US Mapping Initiative maintains three mapping projects. This website presents a small sample of the first phase of one of the mapping projects entitled, In Their Footsteps: Mapping Ottoman Greek Migration to the United States. Drawing from a random-representative sample of 2246 migrants collected from the Ellis Island Foundation’s Passenger List Archive, the research team of the Ottoman Greeks of the US Digital History Project has mapped the migration journeys of 1031 Ottoman Greeks. The sample includes migrants who were documented in the passenger lists as Greek or Turkish nationals and/or of Greek race, citizens of the Ottoman Empire by birth, and arrived in the US between 1892 and 1930.
The map is fully interactive. Visitors to this website are free to click on a location in the Ottoman Empire and the US and view the migrants’ place of birth, last residence in the Empire, port of embarkation, year of arrival, and final US destination. This data represents just a small sample of what the first phase of the In Their Footsteps project will include. This phase of the project is generously supported by the Modern Greek Studies Association’s Innovation Grant.
