Primary Sources, Beatrice Garrard

Autobiographies/Memoirs from Officials

Corsi, Edward. In the Shadow of Liberty. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935.

Edward Corsi, the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island from 1931-1934, wrote this memoir reflecting on his experiences as both an immigrant and an immigration official. Two chapters are of particular interest to me—first, “A Picture of 1907,” wherein Corsi relates an interview with interpreter Frank Martocci about Ellis Island in the early 1900s. In this chapter Martocci tells the story of Alejandra Veles, who was turned away from the country for unconventional gender presentation. He also discusses the screening of single female immigrants, who were particularly suspect due to concerns about prostitution and “immoral” sexual behavior. The other relevant chapter is “Matching Wits with John Chinaman,” which recounts the use of deception and disguise used by Chinese immigrants to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act. Both chapters reflect a border-keeping ideology based on racialized notions of propriety and virtue.

La Guardia, Fiorello H. The Making of an Insurgent: An Autobiography. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1948.

La Guardia worked as an interpreter at Ellis Island from 1907 to 1910. In this autobiography he recounts some of the stories from his time there, including the detainment of a young Italian girl who, after two weeks of interrogation and physical examinations, suffered a complete mental breakdown. The case shows the real trauma that could be caused by medical examinations, especially for women before 1914, when all doctors at Ellis Island were male.

Newspaper Articles

“Woman in Male Garb Gains Her Freedom.” New York Times, October 6, 1908.

“Passed off as a Man.” The Evening Star, October 5, 1908.

“Detain Woman Garbed as Man.” New York Herald, October 5, 1908.

“Mustached, She Plays Man.” The Sun, October 5, 1908.

A slew of newspaper articles were published in the wake of the Frank Woodhull affair. These four articles are the ones I was able to obtain through online archives. Each tells a slightly different version of Woodhull’s life and the details of his detainment at Ellis Island. Several reporters interviewed Woodhull, who is quoted in the text. The accuracy of the quotes attributed to Woodhull is questionable at best—the precise words and content vary between articles—but unfortunately, they seem to be the closest I can get to Woodhull’s actual voice.  

Poetry

Hom, Marlon. Songs of Gold Mountain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Songs of Gold Mountain is a collection of poems carved or written onto the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station. This anonymous poetry reflects the frustrations of detainees at stringent border controls and the poor treatment of immigrants by American officials. There are also gender-related concerns tied into these pieces—female poets tended to reflect on the separation from their husbands, while male poets expressed feelings of helplessness or emasculation. While I think the poetry is fascinating, its relevance to my project is relatively limited. I might use a few quotations to introduce a more human dimension without relying on it for hard evidence.

Oral interviews

Oral History Project, Angel Island. Pacific Regional Humanities Center. UC Davis: Pacific Regional Humanities Center. http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Oral%20History%20Project,%20Angel%20Island

These are transcripts of eleven oral interviews with immigrants who came through Angel Island, all available online. Most of the interviews touch upon the interrogations and physical examinations, although unfortunately there are no East Asian women interviewed, so the perspectives presented are predominantly male. Another limitation is the date range—since the subjects were interviewed in the 2000s, none of them passed through Angel Island any earlier than 1926, eighteen years after Frank Woodhull.

Angel Island: Immigrant Journeys of Chinese-Americans. (1998). Helen Wong Hom. Retrieved from: http://www.angel-island.com/hom.html

In this brief snippet from an interview, Helen Wong Hom recalls “the inspectors undressed me because they couldn't believe I was a girl. They thought I was a boy.” Hom’s testimony raises issues of gender, disrobing, and anxieties about Chinese immigrants “in disguise.” Unfortunately, there is very little of Hom’s story available online. I may contact the interviewer to see if I could obtain a full transcript.

There are also 62 oral interviews from immigrants who passed through Angel Island, held at UC Santa Cruz. No detailed descriptions of the material are available, so I may have to take a leap of faith. With such a large collection, it seems likely that some of the interviews would be useful to me.

Wish List

Frank Woodhull/Mary Johnson has an immigration case file from the 1908 incident, but it is in an archive in D.C. and not accessible online.

Frank Woodhull was living and working in New Orleans. If there were any local news stories or municipal records in New Orleans from before or after his trip abroad, I would love to get my hands on them.

Sample Primary Source


“Mustached, She Plays Man.” The Sun, October 5, 1908.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1908-10-05/ed-1/seq-1.pdf
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1908-10-05/ed-1/seq-2.pdf