Visitors swarm Ellis Island database on U.S. immigrants

Advertiser Staff and News Services

The buzz is that the new Ellis Island database, which offers information on millions of America's immigrants, is arguably one of the most anticipated Web sites in the history of the Internet.

But with more than 27,000 people logging onto the site every second — you read that right — don't be surprised if you get this message once you pass the home page: "Thank you for your interest in the American Family Immigration History Center at ellis island records.org. Due to an extraordinary number of visitors, we must limit access to the site. Please keep trying, or check back later."

The site (http://ellisislandrecords.org) includes information on 22 million immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924. That's 70 percent of all arrivals in that period. About 100 million Americans — 40 percent of the population — can trace their ancestors to the port that sits below the Statue of Liberty.

A successful search will turn up basic information. But a link can take you to see the actual records so you can zoom in and get details such as how much money your great-grandfather was carrying, what his occupation was, and whether he could read or write. Users also can access photographs of some 800 ships — about 80 percent of those that served Ellis Island.

The project took 12,000 volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ nearly 6 million hours over seven years to transcribe 3.5 million pages of ships' manifests.

Until now, finding such information was a daunting task, consuming hours of research on reels of microfilm stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., or the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. But now all you need is one little piece of information: a name.

When the database went online at 6 p.m. April 17, "we thought we were well-prepared, even overprepared," said Peg Zitko, spokesperson for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc.

Organizers had researched the activity of some of the biggest Web sites to go online in recent years, and then increased their server capacity to surpass it.

But the 13 servers, which can process up to 100,000 concurrent users, have proved insufficient.

Because of the demand, officials are trying to add another 10 servers to double the capacity. The Lycos 50 for the week Ending April 21, 2001, rated the Ellis Island site as its No. 1 site.

Web crawlers in Hawai'i suggest that the best time to try the site is around 10 p.m. Hawai'i time, when most sane Mainland folks are asleep.