For history buffs, the site also contains a timeline that includes some fascinating background on the Castle. (In 1824, for example, the Marquis de Lafayette landed there; 10 years later Samuel Morse set up a demonstration of his new telegraph on the grounds; and in 1896, Castle Garden was turned into the New York Aquarium.) And if your ancestors were escaping the Famine, according to the timeline, they may have been disembarking around the same time as Chinese immigrants, whose exodus was spurred by the California Gold Rush. Imagine that culture shock.

If you’ve been to Ellis Island, you may have also been to Castle Garden, though chances are you missed its modest exhibit. Tourists usually pass through the Castle only to buy ferry tickets for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Yet this little known monument to American immigration is probably the “golden door” to which poet Emma Lazarus refers to in her 1883 paean to Lady Liberty, The New Colossus, "Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door."

On another site, you’ll find a revealing account of the first hours and days spent at the Castle by a group of immigrants—English, Scottish, French, Dutch, and German—who arrived on the S.S. Scotland in 1866. The writer, an English woman and a remarkably observant and literate steerage passenger, provides this poignant glimpse into the lives of post-Famine immigrants, the hardships that drove them to leave their homes, and the hopes for a new life that drew them to America, often at great price:

“A very noticeable thing among the miscellaneous crowd was the attention paid by the Irish portion of it to their devotions. Invariably as vesper and matin time drew nigh, men and women scattered here and there were to be seen upon their knees in supplication. At least one-third of the emigrants by the Scotland were Irish, most of them vigorous, spirited young men, many of them bent on joining the Fenian brotherhood, and speaking enthusiastically of its progress. There were two or three young priests among the number.

“It is astonishing how the Irish take to this country, and no wonder when it is remembered how differently they are treated to what they are in the old, of which they speak with great bitterness of spirit. Many are the weeping eyes and widowed hearts, that now under the great exodus going on are leaving their native shores, and it is understood that in the Spring the number of new-comers, more particularly from the counties of Waterford, Wexford and Cork, will be enormous. They know they can find a free home in the far west, and that they will be treated with kindness—kindness that great key to good will and willingness of every man's heart, the want of which on the part of England and the English people, not less than their political wrongs and maltreatment, has been the great secret of the inveterate and vendetta-like feeling and alienation of Ireland from the mother country.

“In the States, they no longer have ‘the country’ thrown in their face, and ‘no Irish need apply’ is never heard in dealing with Americans. There was one among the group of women who was the object of great commiseration. She had lost her little one on the voyage, from fever, and the poor child had to be thrown overboard, she, poor mother, being left, like Rachel, weeping for her child and would not be comforted because it was no more. It is indeed a sad thing to have to hide one's offspring in the grave on land, but there is something about death and burial in the cold canvas winding-sheet at sea, in a fathomless grave, yet harder and more galling.”

Roots Web also has a mailing list for genealogists interested in Castle Garden. You can sign up here. There’s another good history of Castle Garden, with links to more information here.