By Bhavna Patel
Walking through the neighborhood today, you would find it
hard to believe that a few decades ago, Curry Hill went by a different
nickname: Little Armenia… Armenians began to arrive in the state by the
mid-19th century. Many of those who came were educated, paving careers in
business and medicine. Shortly after the 1894-1896 massacres of Armenians by
Sultan Abdul Hamid II in Ottoman Turkey, Armenian immigration to the United
States increased. According to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration figures, from
1899 to 1931, 81,729 Armenian immigrants entered the U.S. From the Hamidian
massacres to the years after the Armenian Genocide, there was a stream of
Armenian immigration to the United States. As with many immigrants during those
years, the first glimpse of their refuge was Ellis Island. Exact numbers from
the influx are difficult to determine. Barry Moreno from the Ellis Island
Immigration Museum says, “Prior to 1899, Armenians would only have been
recorded by their nationality. Thus most of them would have been recorded as
Turkish.” According to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration figures, from 1899 to
1931, 81,729 Armenian immigrants entered the U.S.; seventy percent of whom
entered through Ellis Island at the Port of New York.
