798
Opinion of the Court
the filled portions of the Island in its voting districts. To the extent that the registration lists, on the other hand, have at least some tendency to suggest activity on the Island, there are lists for only 10 years out of the prescriptive period (1917, 1918, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1930, 1936, 1939, 1945, and 1953), and why New Jersey might have known about these lists is not addressed by any specific evidence.
3
The third category of New York's proffered prescription evidence covers personal impressions that the filled portions of the Island belong to New York. We have recognized before that the belief of the inhabitants of disputed territory that they are citizens of one of the competing States is "of no inconsiderable importance." Handly's Lessee v. Anthony, 5 Wheat. 374, 384 (1820); see also Maryland v. West Virginia, 217 U. S., at 41, 44 (noting that people living in the disputed territory gave allegiance to West Virginia); Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U. S., at 527 (noting that all but a handful of the residents of the disputed territory considered themselves citizens of Tennessee). New York's strongest items of this sort of circumstantial evidence are the voting registration lists for 10 of the possible 60 years, on which numerous individuals list their residence as "Ellis Island, New York." The significance of the declarations is qualified, however, for the reasons we have already given, and the rest of New York's evidence about the understanding of individuals is hardly worth mentioning. This includes, for example, documents indicating that the same two men who witnessed the Commissioner of Immigration's signature on contracts four different times in 1908 and 1909 listed their residences as "Ellis Island, NY"; that another witness did the same once in 1904, and two others did in 1908. On one petition for naturalization filed in 1911 the applicant listed her residence as "Ellis Island, New York," as did her witness. Finally, one William Hewitt, who lived in the officers' quarters on the Island with
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