'Give me your tired, your poor': Ellis Island register clerk's fascinating photographs document the birth of the American melting pot as the United States threw open its doors to become a nation of immigrants.

These fascinating photographs capture America's rich cultural heritage through the lives of the immigrants who helped shape the country. 

Taken at Ellis Island in the early 20th century, they reveal the diverse and unique history of the U.S. as a nation of immigrants. 

Amateur photographer Augustus Sherman, who worked as the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 to 1925, was intrigued by people's background and culture. Most of his 250 pictures feature subjects dressed in their elaborate national costumes or folk dress.A Romanian piper is evidence of the diverse costumes and native dress that came through Ellis Island in droves in the early 20th century

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A young Swedish girl in traditional pointed hat and eleborate costume is pictured on Ellis Island while her family wait to be approved to travel to the mainland (left) while a Slovak woman and her son (right) were one of millions of families who fled Hungarian persecution to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

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Three women are pictured from Guadeloupe, a French overseas territory in the southern Caribbean Sea, arrived at Ellis Island on their way to America

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A couple of Dutch children, dressed in their traditional clogs and costume, clutch onto their immigration forms in the pictures by photographer Augustus Sherman

They were taken during the height of immigration to the U.S. from the 1890's to the 1950's, when millions of the disposed, the persecuted, and people just looking for a chance to pursue a new life, would have passed through Ellis Island.

Many of the people featured were families or individuals who were being detained on the island as they for medical reasons, or as they waited for money, travel tickets or to be collected. 

His subjects, dressed in the exotic local garb of mostly Eastern and Southern Europe, would go on to become the founding mothers and fathers of communities across the continent that exist to this day.  

The fascinating collection includes a Slovakian family, one of millions who fled Hungarian persecution to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Others came to seek their fortune in a new land of promise.