G.W. Peters at Ellis Island, 1903

Unfortunately, we don't know much about G.W. Peters. I found a couple of practically useless links in my search but that shouldn't keep you from looking. Information turns up (and sometimes disappears) all the time. These illustrations appeared in The Century Magazine for March 1903 in an article by Jacob A. Riis entitled In the Gateway of Nations. Click on images to enlarge them.

Peters has not become as famous as some of his (or her) contemporaries, but his/her work is not worth dismissing as being just that of another hack. I find a lot of humanity in the faces even if some of the poses appear stiff. It could be that Peters patched together many drawings from individual photos taken at Ellis Island. Judging from the crowds of immigrants being processed it would seem unlikely that Peters could be working with a sketch pad and not be in the way.

Riis writes: "How it all came back to me as I stood on the deck of the ferry-boat plowing its way from the Battery Park to Ellis Island. They were there, my fellow-travelers of old: the men with their strange burdens of feather-beds, cooking-pots, and things unknowable, but mighty of bulk, in bags of bed-ticking much the worse for wear. . . ."

"Immigrants Landing at Ellis Island -- Serving Soup on the Roof Garden" is the title of this illustration.

"The Registry Desk, Ellis Island." Riis writes: ". . . . Ellis Island is the nations' gateway to the promised land. There is not another such to be found anywhere. In a single day it has handled seven thousand immigrants. 'Handled' is the word; nothing short of it will do."

Mother and daughter have been registered and are on their way to "America."

"The New York Detention Room, Ellis Island"

"Behind carefully guarded doors," Riis writes, "wait the 'outs,' the detained immigrants, for the word that will let down the bars, or fix them in place immovably. . . . And the hopelessly bewildered are there, often enough exasperated at the restraint, which they cannot understand. . . ."

A less-than triumphal entrance to a city where the streets were said to be paved in gold.

Say hello to your great grandma and think how she felt riding on the back of a horse cart into Manhattan.