A man from Ireland watched wistfully as the Statue of Liberty drifted into view through the evening fog. It was his first sight of land after leaving his wife and child behind in Ireland, and being the good Irishman he was, he was about to get drunk as a skunk in honor of a new life, and the sight of New York. 

That man was my great grandfather, and he drank so much that night he was put into quarantine for a week; doctors at customs mistaking his hangover for signs of disease. He went on to have seven children with a new woman in New York, before leaving them to fend for themselves during the great crash - making no mention of his old family and their half-sibling back home. Such was life in the early 1900s. 

Three of my four great grandfathers were among the 12 million immigrants processed at Ellis Island over just a few decades, and those desperate families helped change not just New York, but the United States for good. 

Here are 20 photos, from back when Ellis Island was the country's biggest border crossing.