US: She is immortalised in bronze in New York and Cobh as the first immigrant to enter America through Ellis Island, but researchers will reveal today that Annie Moore was not the woman the world has long believed.
Until now, Moore was believed to have left New York shortly after she arrived in 1892 aged 15, moving to Texas, where she married a descendant of Daniel O'Connell. She was believed to have died when she was run over by a tram at age 46.
Genealogist Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and New York City Commissioner for Records Brian Andersson will reveal at a press conference today, however, that there were two Annie Moores and that the woman who died in Texas was not even born in Ireland, but in Illinois.
"No documentary material was ever presented, as far as I know, to support the claim of the Illinois Annie Moore and why so many people accepted it, I have no idea," Mr Andersson told The Irish Times yesterday.
The "real" Moore, who was hustled ahead of a German immigrant at Ellis Island by her two younger brothers and by an Irish longshoreman who shouted "ladies first", joined her parents in New York and spent the rest of her life in the city.
She settled on Manhattan's Lower East Side, married a bakery clerk and had 11 children, five of whom survived. She died of heart failure in 1924 at age 47.
The genealogist discovered while working on a television documentary that the Illinois Moore was not an immigrant and offered a $1,000 prize on the internet for anyone who could trace the true story of the girl who arrived at Ellis Island.
Soon Mr Andersson got involved, discovering the naturalisation papers of Moore's brother Philip, who arrived with her. He was listed in the 1930 census with a daughter Anna, whom the researchers found in the Social Security death index. That led them to her son, who is Moore's great-nephew.
Mr Andersson said he never set out to debunk the myth of Annie Moore, but only to discover the truth with no preconceptions. "It's not a revised story. It's the true story, it's the only story," he said.
He believes Moore's life still has resonance as an immigrant story but he acknowledges that it lacks some of the adventure of the old myth. "It's not the 'Go West, Young Woman' story any more. I don't think the real Annie Moore ever got further west than Broadway," he said.
Moore's descendants will appear at today's press conference and attend a tea party at the Irish consulate general in New York.