The process was thusly:
1) Immigrant asked for permission to emigrate, after which the emigrants background was checked IE any legal issues, and if a man was of draft age (age 22 all men were subject the draft for 2 yrs of active duty they should have served this otherwise they would not get permission)
2) the ticket agent would report to local police when a ticket was purchased
3) at some point the emigrant would apply for a passport which was issued in the capital (in the case of Croatia they were issued at Zagreb in dual language
Croatian and French, which was the international diplomatic language of the day
4) the emigrants ticket typically was all inclusive that is land and sea travel. The port the left from depended on which company sold tickets in a town near them
5) at the port an agent (who spoke the emigrants language) of the steamship company began to record info on the manifest, which was taken from the passport and completed at sea. Actually it was against the law to modify manifests at
Ellis Island or any of the other immigrant processing station
6) once the ship landed at the US port they would be separted from US Citizens and immigrants who carried enough money to be deemed to not pose any issues of self support. the others would be taken to and Immigrant Processing station. Going through processing usually took a few hours. Some immigrants who had health or mental issues or those deemed to not have the ability to support themselves would go through a Special Inquiry (noted as SI in front of the immgrants name) If it was too late in the day some immigrants would be housed overnight. Any immigrant who did not pass "muster" would be Deported and it was the responsibility of the steamship company to transport them back to
Europe A woman traveling alone was required to have a blood male relative meet them. This was mostly for safety reasons as
Ports of Entry had all sorts of unsavory characters ready to take advantage of immigrants. If a woman was "betrothed" her bridegroom would come to the processing station where they would be married (NYC has many such marriage records in archives)
But alas the old tale about names being changed at
Ellis Island simply will not die.... when Stephen
Morse and I spoke at last years Federation of East European Family History Societies Int'l Conf. we were horrified to hear a speaker say that "not many names were changed at
Ellis Island" Stephen and I tried to reason with her but she refused to believe the truth.
That said... were they mis-spellings and other errors on manifests? You betcha there were! But nothing that will hinder our search permently.
Here is an article of mine that
Olive Tree posted 4 years ago which is still timely.
http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2005/01/oddities-of-s...Robert