If only these walls could talk … imagine the stories they’d tell,” we mused aloud as we walked through the Great Hall on Ellis Island. You could almost feel the tension and fear seeping out of the cold and sometimes cracked tiles as we walked down the long hallways showcasing various rooms that had been used for medical examinations and legal questioning.

We stood looking out the windows of the main processing center on New Year’s Day, exactly 133 years since Ellis Island accepted its first new arrivals — on New Year’s Day 1892.

I hadn’t realized before that while Ellis Island was the official point of entry for immigrants to the United States, it wasn’t the first American soil they would have encountered. The water around the island was too shallow for transatlantic ships, so most docked and unloaded their passengers in Manhattan.

That would have been where most first- and second-class passengers were allowed to enter the country after a brief inspection — but steerage passengers were ferried to Ellis Island to be processed. My paternal side of the family tells stories of our ancestors passing through Ellis Island in 1875, 1876 and 1878, on the ships Suevia, Pomerania and Wieland, respectively.

I was eager to look them up and see if our family lore really matched the records. Surprisingly, it did! The one difference was their countries of origin. We’ve always been told they all came from Germany, but out of the 30 or so names, the documents listed Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

One of the family stories we’ve passed down is of a girl of 14 or so, accompanied by her parents and grandmother. They all arrived in Manhattan, and by the time they were processed at Ellis Island, the girl had fallen ill. She was marked with chalk and sent back.

Her family remained in the states, but her grandmother opted to travel back to the home country with her. The grandmother died on the return voyage and was buried at sea.

The girl stayed with friends, got a job, saved up money, and, when she was 18, again attempted the trip. For a second time, she was denied entry. It wasn’t until she was close to 30 that she was able to reunite with her family in the states.

I don’t know if the story is true, or if it is just family lore — but since the rest of the names and dates matched records on the island, it does make me curious.

The Great Hall had a serenity and solemnity that crept into your bones. Walking up “the stairs of separation” — a staircase divided into three sections to separate immigrants who were heading to New York, to the detention center or to the railroad ticket agent — one could imagine it to be a place filled with many tears: from both excitement and sorrow. I hugged my youngest a little tighter as we ascended the stairs … thinking this may have been the last place that my distant relative saw her parents until she was an adult.

Touring the Statue of Liberty, though, dispelled all sense of melancholy. A deep sense of awe and pride in our nation took its place.

It was fun to learn that Gustave Eiffel was the architect who had designed the interior framework, a fact I had long ago forgotten — if I had ever known it. As we walked up the stairs inside we were fascinated by some of the fun tidbits of information on the walls.

• The Statue of Liberty is the tallest statue in North America.

• She was once used as a lighthouse that could be seen 24 miles away.

• The statue’s copper skin weighs more than 62,000 pounds.

We were surprised to learn that some people had been opposed to having any statue — feeling it promoted violence and revolution. Edouard de Laboulaye, who first proposed the statue, conceived of it as a monument that would not be seen as leading an uprising so much as lighting the way. Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi incorporated many old symbols of peace into the design of the statue, officially named Liberty Enlightening the World.

Her classical face and drapery suggest a Roman goddess of liberty; the broken shackles symbolize freedom newly achieved; the seven-pointed crown represents her shedding light on the seven seas and continents; and the tablet she holds commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; she is an apostle of American freedom, law and justice.

We stood back from her, taking it all in — standing in a part of American history — when my littlest offered his thoughts on the experience: “She looks better on the outside. It was weird going up inside her dress — there wasn’t much to see up there.”