01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 4, 2006

BY RON FRANSCELL
Beaumont Enterprise

The search for our American roots, 4 times out of 10, leads to a single massive building on an island in New York Harbor. It's mostly silent now, but teeming with ghosts.

Doug Riggs, Travel editor

NEW YORK -- Stepping off the ferry at Ellis Island, a thousand miles from home under damp skies, time and space compressed.

A thousand footsore people spilled down the heaving gangway, yearning to breathe free on dry land, speaking what seemed like a thousand different tongues. We'd already paid for passage, but most had come for Liberty, and the stop at Ellis Island was simply part of the price of admission.

It was already late in the day when we arrived. Light slanted through the enormous windows in the great hall. Over more than 60 years -- from 1892 to 1954 -- some 20 million immigrants passed through this room, this gateway to a new world, a new life.

Among them was my grandfather.

On Oct. 17, 1911, Pietro Franscella arrived on the steamer Niagara from Le Havre in northern France. He was 17, alone, having traveled from his small village in the Italian-Swiss Alps to come to America, perhaps giving his philandering father Paolo a convenient scapegoat for a young neighbor's pregnancy.

He had $25 in his pocket, mostly to pay for a train ticket to Colorado Springs, Colo., where some of his mother's family lived.

When the American clerk asked him his trade, he said he was a farm laborer, as so many did, but he didn't want to work in the fields. No, he told the clerk, he was not an anarchist. No, he was not a polygamist. Yes, he had a sponsor, his mother's brother in Brooklyn who'd promised to meet him at the "kissing gate."

I searched for my grandfather's records in Ellis Island's massive computer archives, where for $5 a visitor can tap into an extensive database and, with luck, find digitized ships' manifests, photos and immigrant information. Fine laser-printed copies are available for $25 a page.

At first, my grandfather's name didn't come up. I presumed he'd been lost to pen-and-ink American bureaucracy. He'd always told the story of how he'd become an American from the start, dropping the Italian "a" from Franscella, and transforming Giuseppe Pietro Franscella to the name on my grandfather's mailbox: Joseph Peter Franscell.

And everyone has heard horror stories of inept immigration clerks, imprecise ships' pursers and illiterate immigrants who made a hash of names. It was common.

But a helpful researcher peering over my shoulder suggested a couple of tricky clicks, and there he was, officially and forever. He'd given only his middle name, and there was that ancient "a," proud as hell.

I AM AMONG the 40 percent of all Americans who had at least one relative pass through Ellis Island, a 27-acre historic site just off the tip of bustling lower Manhattan.

Every year, some 3 million people shell out up to $11.50 each to ride the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island ferry to explore the restored main building (sadly, some three dozen Ellis structures remain decaying hulks).

Many come looking for ghosts, and I found mine.

Leaving the history center, I strolled out into the immense Registry Hall, where my grandfather and other immigrants had probably waited for hours, maybe longer, to be examined and questioned, perhaps detained further, perhaps sent away.

I sat on one of the old benches, my legs thick and exhausted from a day of standing in lines, holding my balance aboard the boat, going halfway up every wrong block, standing in more lines, finding something to eat, paying a dozen little charges, and following a thousand people wherever they were going.

The light had sunken further, and I wondered: When did they stop being tired? Was it when they set foot on the mainland? Was it when they stepped into the first street where they heard a language they recognized? Or did they never stop working to earn what they'd won?

LATER, I wandered into "Treasures from Home," a poignant exhibit in what was once the infirmary, and looked at the things they'd carried: Wedding dresses, china, sewing machines, shawls, photographs, holy books. But they brought more, like the strange musical instruments of faraway places, porcelain figurines, even hand-painted Easter eggs.

And again, I wondered: If I were a 17-year-old kid leaving home, what would I have taken? What did he take?

I can only imagine the difficulties of his journey. For me, interpreting the babble of a subway map, unscrambling the train codes, turning a dollar bill into a metro card, and screwing up the courage to dive into rush-hour's human torrent for a simple ride Uptown -- my first -- was a simultaneously vexing and invigorating adventure. If I take the wrong train, it costs me, at worst, two bucks to turn around. He came much farther, and there was no going back.

My grandfather died in 1985, at age 90. He ended up with far more than he had brought, including three sons of his own.

In 1911, he'd gone west from New York, met my grandmother in Colorado, and pressed farther to San Francisco and later Los Angeles, where he was a chef in a fancy Hollywood hotel and bought little parcels of land here and there.

He taught me to fish in the streams of the High Sierras and cooked every meal that was ever served in his house. And although he'd long ago dropped the vowels and the names that marked him, he never lost the rich Italian accent, and thank God for that.

It's the voice I hear in my dreams of him.

Joe Franscell never spoke to me of New York City. Maybe because he was Pietro Franscella in those first few days, but he was here, however briefly. New York was the gateway to his new life. And a good, long life it was.

I spent only one day here understanding my grandfather's journey, which has now lasted 95 years. It was worth the trip because some journeys take you farther from where you started, closer to where you come from.

If you go

As one of America's most important historic sites, Ellis Island is also among the most heavily visited monuments. Visiting both Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty will take most of a day, so a little planning helps.

First, you must get there. The Circle Line Ferry provides transportation to Ellis Island from Battery Park in New York and Liberty State Park in New Jersey from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with longer summer hours. For up-to-date ticket rates and schedules, visit www.circlelinedowntown.com.

The restored main building offers more than you might imagine. There is no admission fee.

The museum's self-guided tours chronicle Ellis Island's role in immigration history. You'll find artifacts, photographs, prints, videos, interactive displays, oral histories, and temporary exhibits. Among them are the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, the Ellis Island Living Theater, and a film documentary, Island of Hope, Island of Tears.

In 2001, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and the National Park Service unveiled the American Family Immigration History Center inside the main building. Here, professional researchers will help you explore your family's immigrant experience, using computers, digital archives and old-fashioned printed materials. There's a $5 fee to enter, and then you'll pay extra for any documents you want.

A snack bar in the main building provides a full menu of food and drinks.

ON THE WEB: http://ellisisland.org; www.nps.gov/elis/; www.historychannel.com/ellisisland.