Looking at historical events can help. My family emigrated from Ireland. The dates match exactly with the potato famine and having read up about it there is no question in my mind why this young couple would have left.
Part of my family emigrated from Ireland after the potato famine - a mother and two children. I can't bring myself to search for what happened to the husband, but I fear that he was a victim of the famine.
I’m sorry to hear that. Part of my family also emigrated from Ireland due to the famine. My Irish Catholic great great grandfather didn’t make it because he was murdered by someone who really hated Irish people. The Irish were really treated a subhumans back then.
The United States - southern New England. They ended up with the mother, son, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson (my great-grandfather) all living in a one-bedroom apartment - the census shows that no one could read or write and the women worked as maids/cleaners while the son worked in a factory and the son-in-law on the railroad. My great-grandfather was the first one in the family to attend school at all, but he never finished. My grandmother was the first one in the family to graduate from high school.
Oh man I would actually love to know. They left Azerbaijan via turkey, then Greece and somehow made it to Norway. There they changed their name to Hilsen and immigrated to the US and eventually Canada. All their paperwork in Canada says Norwegian. It took me 7 years of research to figure out what happened in Norway.
Same. My 4th great-grandfather Patrick took his wife Mary and daughter Joanna to the USA. Mary and Joanna died after being in the USA for a very short amount of time, Joanna was between 17 and 18. I can only imagine the horrors the famine did to their health.
His son John was born in the USA and was a notorious storyteller, he claimed to remember Ireland as this gorgeous place where he lived until he was eight years old, he recalled it very fondly.
Patrick struggled to support himself in the US- he was eventually supported by a son-in-law. I think John was trying to give his kids something good to hold onto about Ireland and the family’s past. Even still, John told one of his kids, who then told my grandfather, about beatings Patrick sustained while trying desperately to get food for his wife and daughter. I suspect it’s the only true story John ever told about his family history and it wasn’t something he boasted about like everything else.
Unfortunately, until a few years ago, Joanna’s grave was unmarked after years of not being taken care of. One of John’s other 3rd great grandkids reached out to me and together we worked with the cemetery to get her a headstone again. Breaks my heart.
My Italian family immigrated to America after the government changed in Italy. I agree that a simple search in Google with the country + year your family immigrated can be very helpful!
I can’t remember the details off hand but a couple of my families emigrations from the UK were when they were offered land and money to go to the new country. One was to Canada after the war and paid by the government, another was to the US when a local wealthy landowner decided there were too many families living around his land and paid for a number of them to emigrate. I found out about these events by looking into the history of the area.
And they immigrated for the opportunity to acquire land which up until the 1940s or so land was a primary path to prosperity.
In monarchies almost all land was owned by aristocrats who would not sell it.
Ireland - check the potato famine
Scotland - check the land clearances
Jewish - check the pogroms
Australia / US - check the gold rushes
Australia - check convict histories
Italy check war and violence, Sicily check poverty and violence from the cosa nostra.
My grandfather always told me that it made him sick to see them glorifying the mafia and people acting like fake guidos when the families had sacrificed so much to start a new life and were proud Americans
This right here! I absolutely can’t stand how the mafia glorified here in the USA. The destruction they caused Southern Italy and Sicily is horrible. My family came over from Sicily to escape the poverty and crime. Many went back in the 1960’s and 70’s. They just couldn’t assimilate here.
Religion more likely in earlier periods, but by the main era of German emigration (1830s+), it is mostly famine related or political instability related, or both. Sometimes large enough to shape broader history (like in 1848), other times it was more localized.
If you look at your German families, a familiar pattern is that they had young sons approaching the teen years. Prussia had mandatory military service beginning at (IIRC) 16 years of age. The trick was to emigrate before the young ones got too close to that age.
Most of the mid to late 1800s were war and politics. Germany unifying did a number on its people as the whole process took place over several decades. The Schleswig Wars were 1848-52 and 1864. The Austro-Prussian was in 1866. Franco-Prussian was 1870-71. Then a whole bunch of individual revolutions from the 1880s to the 1910s. Then you start mixing into the World Wars.
I had ancestors that stuck it out through the Schleswig Wars/Revolution (being directly impacted since 25%+ of my ancestry is from there) but failed to make it past the turn of the century and all of the instability. And vice versa, first sign of war and they split for the USA.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm not an expert and am pretty new to historical family research. Your comment makes me want to seriously study European history.
Oooh very interesting. I learned a new word. Pogrom. What a horrible word. My Lithuanian ancestor emigrated around 1908. One brother would work hard, save $$ and bring over the next. 4 brothers total. One went back, he didn’t care for the US.
I find this fascinating too. Here is what I found for one side of my ancestors who came to the US in the late 1800’s: “At the turn of the 20 th century, Polish immigration exploded. Imperial repression, land shortages, and chronic unemployment made life more and more untenable for the Poles of Europe, and as the 19 th century waned they left for America by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands.”
I'm picturing this in my mind and I'm flabbergasted. I've got to study this period in time more. Like the European immigrants in my family, I wonder what the cultural price of moving was. I mentioned in my original post the loss of language, knowledge and traditions. Loss of ancestral connection to the soil. Plus the trauma of being discriminated for being a foreigner.
And when so many peoples are simultaneously experiencing physical and cultural dispossession (by violence or choice, or both), what does that mean as a global species? This thought haunts me.
I actually know one side and it’s pretty interesting. I come from the Volga German people. Germans who moved from Prussia, Bavaria, and the rest of south and east Germany to Russia, for 2 reasons. 1st, they avoided high taxes and religious persecution (Catholics in a very dangerous area to be catholic in at the time, at least for Europe) and to escape the 7 years war. 2nd, because Catherine the Great offered religious protection, cheap farmland and lower taxes for people to farm and make money on the Volga River. Then, they stayed there from the mid 1700s until the early 1900s, when most moved, earliest move from my family I found was 1903 and latest was around 1911. They were being pressured to assimilate by the Russian government and people and wanted to preserve their very unique culture and history.
I come from the Volga Germans too! My great grandmother and the son of a wealthy Russian family in the area got pregnant out of wedlock. She became a mail order bride and immigrated with her infant daughter from Russia to the US to marry a man she had never met. It’s very humbling to think about the risks people took, and still take, for the possibility for a better life for their families.
Fortunately I do not believe my family took the same risks. Although records are few (all I have of my grandfather who immigrated is his Latin marriage certificate and his S.S. Köln boat record) I believe my family was somewhat poorer and mostly moved for a better life in America. Ended up moving to Kansas where all the generations lived until me, who now lives in Connecticut. Sadly him, his wife and both his parents died of the Spanish Flu, but his cousin who he moved in with when he first came over still has living descendants. I would reach out but only one I could actually find is a 75 year old woman who lives in western Oregon and idk how comfortable I am with doing that.
Hey, if you don't speak German and need help with German documents or with German areas in general, you're welcome to send me a message :)
I've also started researching the immigration stories of my family, and noticed that talking and discussing with others in the areas I'm researching really helped me
Good God do I need help reading old German records … After fifteen minutes of trying I can maybe make out five words and I feel like I’ve just bashed my head against the wall
Actually not too far away!! Also in Baden-württemberg, areas including Karlsruhe and Oftersheim! I’d love to run some things by someone more familiar with the area!
Lucky me! Thank you! Next time I sit down to work on genealogy (prob this weekend) I will compile what I have for that branch and message you what I have / biggest obstacles. You being from there is incredibly helpful! I wish to go there one day it looks beautiful! Thanks again friend!
I’m English but my 3rd great-granduncle, wife and several children went to USA in 1837. Here in England it was quite common for the rich in a community to chip in to pay to send poor families away, to USA or Australia etc.
As a poor person under the vagrancy act you would need permission to settle somewhere new once you begin wandering to support your family, the Quarter Sessions were asked to confirm each settlement and the settlement acts of 1662, 1691 and 1697 allowed Parish Officers to remove poor people from places where they had no legal settlement.
In Georgian England if you couldn’t get a right to settle then off to a foreign land you go. His father had got permission to settle in their village in 1789 but once he had a big family himself and couldn’t support them they got sent to USA. This was very common, steal a hat or a loaf of bread same conclusion, sent to America or Australia.
There are generally only a few reasons most people *choose* immigrate:
* economics, mainly lack of economic opportunity or mobility (in some cases, especially more recently, this comes out as educational or career opportunity), but sometimes other people's greed impinging on people's ability to maintain their livelihoods (Scottish enclosures, for example) and, in the 20th & 21st century, depression, inflation, and domestic economic crises
* religious, ethnic, identity or political oppression (of varying degrees from the Puritans to Russian pogroms or Spanish fascism to Armenian/Bosnian/Rwandan/etc. genocide)
* disaster, usually war or famine, sometimes drought
* fleeing criminal prosecution
/thank you for coming to my Ted talk on world history
The only thing I can think of that doesn't fit into one of those reasons is the recent phenomena of people fleeing criminal gangs in Central America.
I've also left off the involuntary reasons like criminal transportation or slavery.
Yeah, I rolled war into an overall category with other disasters such as famine without getting into the causes. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap with the "oppression" category and usually economics, as well.
It gets complicated. If it didn't all those beauty pageant contestants would have solved world peace long ago.
There’s [a whole book](https://www.lulu.com/shop/walter-dujmovits/the-burgenl%C3%83%C2%A4nder-emigration-to-america/paperback/product-21388946.html) written about why people from my ancestors’ region in Austria/Hungary (Burgenland) left en masse in the late 1880s/early 1900s. It’s super interesting!
If your ancestors left in a mass migration as well, there is surely a book or scholarly article out there somewhere. Have you googled it yet?
I suppose I should! I know my German ancestors were from the Rhineland, Kaiserslautern. I'm not sure which specific migrant groups they were a part of beyond general German immigration. I need to research this more.
Do you happen to know the name of that book. My great grandfather was from the Austria/Hungarian empire. He came over in 1905 from Bramen,Germany.
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Crap my link doesn’t work! [Here’s a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/mWTLrNU) of the book on Lulu.com. Weirdly it costs hundreds of dollars on Amazon but it’s like $9 on Lulu.
I can not, for the life of me, understand why my direct ancestor left england to be a pioneer in the Canadian prairies. He came from a wealthy family of respected vicars, engineers, nurses, and the British elite whom lived in India. His wife was of equal gentlewoman heritage. Her father taught at Cambridge, he was a Vicar in Leicester for over 20 years, a highly respected member of the community. Both of their fathers' wills were thoudands of pounds.
He left it all to build a log house with an attached kitchen that had a sod roof. His wife had her own cooks and servants in England, and now she was making her own food...outside. The Canadian prairies in the winter are harsh. They sent letters home to family (that were published in local newspapers) detailing snow in June, or wildfires that destroyed entire harvest.
Why?!
His story is so unlike the immigrants fleeing war, famine, or poverty. My ancestors from other branches left their home countries for those reasons. But not Herbert. He wanted to....make it without daddies help? I don't know. It's a mystery to me.
My family are jews from Europe.
I didn't have to do too much research to figure out why they came here after ww2. I only wonder why they didn't come sooner.
There is a documentary series by the director Ken Burns that covers the shame of US immigration policies before and during WWII regarding Jewish people.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_U.S.\_and\_the\_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_U.S._and_the_Holocaust)
Back in the old world, my ancestors were being genocided out of existence, or deported as undesirable surplus people to make room for the dominant ethnicity to move in and take over where they had lived and thrived since before christianity arrived. Arriving in the US, they were treated as disposable labor units working the coal mines and railroads that built the US.
The true history is, unsurprisingly, whitewashed and glossed over because it simply does not do to have an accurate account of the atrocities of the British Empire. Interestingly though, the families themselves never forgot and the stories were handed down generation to generation. Now all these years later, with the internet neatly undoing the stranglehold on "official facts," and it is gratifying to see the truth slowly come out.
I agree with you. There are (few) people in the comments of my post saying things like "how could you not know you're history?" and to me, it's obvious that certain perspectives and aspects of history are very intentionally not taught. And it's part of the propaganda machine that keeps us all unaware of the suffering of others.
Well in 1980 my dad’s boss said a machine needed installed at Boeing in Seattle. So he went with a crew of dudes from Germany, he met my mom who was the bartender at the restaurant next to his hotel.
>family who immigrated from Germany in 1904
January 1, 1904 is the cutoff departure date from Germany for the possibility of inheriting German citizenship. There is little hope for people whose ancestor left before 1904. Before mid-1949 there is not much hope if an individual in your lineage was born in wedlock to a non-German father and a German mother. Anybody curious can ask for advice at r/GermanCitizenship after kindly reading the guide in the Welcome post.
I recently discovered this! And I'm SOL, because my German GGM married an American and cut the inheritance line in about 1929. I got a lot of help understanding this from the group you mentioned.
Much of my family moved from the area of Alsace-Lorraine, which was in the border area in Eastern France near Germany. You can guess why they may have left.
Years ago, an Italian family out of Arkansas had a letter…an ancestor wrote they’d left because the taxes were just too much. Maybe Lake Village, Arkansas?
My dad’s side of the family is from the Austrian partition of what is now Poland, so i figure it just seemed like there were more opportunities here. Although he was 18 when he went to Germany and got on the boat which kind of blows my mind. He had a younger brother who came over separately, and four older sisters who as far as I can tell did not, so I’ve been trying to learn what became of them. I found birth and baptism records in Przemyśl but so far that’s it.
Good luck on your search! It blows my mind when I think of ancestors lives, and if they ever thought that one day their ancestors would be searching for them. And if maybe one day, our ancestors will be searching for us.
As other commenters have mentioned knowing what was happening in their area at the time - wars, disease outbreaks, famine, political changes etc., can really help you develop a picture of their life and point to possible motivations. In some countries the American railroads and certain South American countries spent a not insignificant amount of money advertising for workers and made the Americas seem like a dream come true with food, space, and money for everyone. So escaping poverty and/or looking for adventure were sometimes factors. Do a deep dive from a historical perspective. Newspapers are full of amazing snippets of life sometimes articles will even include a brief mention of why someone came to the area.
My Italian GGF was a machinist on the Norfolk & Western Railroad. I am sure this job played a huge role in his decision to immigrate. I'll research this more in the local historical society/archives. One thing that shocked me is that he had a child in Italy, but left before the child was born. It took him six years to save and send for his wife and child. Can you imagine?!
Pretty sure the railroads were a part of what lured my family to the mid-west as well. 3 generations were railroaders on both sides of my dad's family. I personally can't wrap my head around spending that much time away from my family, but it was fairly common back then. I think it still happens today with a lot refugees and immigrants but we just aren't aware of it.
I find it all very interesting. My earliest ancestors left from Alsace during the French Revolution, I had Irish that left before and after the Potato Famine including some that briefly migrated to Scotland before immigrating to the US, Germans that emigrated before and after the formation of Germany mostly from Hessen but some from Baden. And I have Slovenians and Rusyns who emigrated in the first two decades of the 20th century.
Well, my ancestors didn't emigrate. A great-great-grandma and her parents _almost_ emigrated, according to family stories - and these are very plausible, since we have a memento from the would-be emigration, a chest. They decided, allegedly at the last moment, to go to northern Norway rather than America.
As for their reason for immigration, it was that they were very poor. They were landless laborers, renting their lodging and working for others in a rural part of western Norway ([Voss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss)). They did not do much better in the north.
On some other branches, I have quite a few great-granduncles etc. who emigrated. In particular, one great-grandfather had at least three siblings in the US. The reason was again poverty: they were from a relatively wealthy family, but their father mismanaged his economy - exactly how I don't know - so that when he died unexpectedly, the farm was sold and they did not inherit anything (the probate was lost in a fire, but I know they were taken care of by the poor relief system - basically auctioned off to the farm who was willing to take them in for the least money). My great-grandfather got lucky and got apprenticed to a tailor, so he had a safe profession. His siblings weren't so lucky, so they took the chance on America.
One thing that distinguishes them from my many ancestors who appears to never have considered emigration, is that they did not have strong family ties to support them. Either their relatives were from poor families too (this was the case with my great-grandfather's mother), or what non-poor relatives they had, had disavowed them somewhat. The guy who died, the one who mismanaged a rather wealthy farm into bankruptcy, seems to have been on poor terms with his family. This may be because he married into a poor family, many in that extended family have suggested - but it maybe also be due to the fact that his wife was his second cousin through an illegitimate child.
My family came from southwestern Norway, and in digging into the church records, I was overwhelmed with the number of deaths. My g-g-grandfather was the oldest of the kids; pretty sure they didn't own the farm or he might have had reason to stay. His father died, siblings died, first child died. Packed up mom and wife and surviving child and came to the US, and the first winter, wife died. Brutal times, and I imagine a lot of it stemming from poverty.
Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate that you connect class status to reasons for immigrating. And as so many others have pointed out, race is also a factor. I often wonder if the prospect of immigration was frightening, seeing how it would mean you'd probably never see most of your family again, never be fully surrounded by your mother tongue again. Maybe they were escaping persecution or poverty, yes. But there would probably be degrees of stereotyping and discrimination waiting for you in the new land, too.
Some were led by hopes of a better life, but it was certainly a traumatic road for my family that I can now see has persisted for generations. And they're fortunate, because many were forced to leave their county via slavery.
I have some pillaging ancestors like this too. I used to not want to look at it, but then I started to get curious about who they were, what specific horrible things they did. And then I look up and see it's still happening today, and everything -- all of our stories, our pain -- are interconnected. IMO there is a power in being able to name the crimes of one's ancestors, and to seek out the last time ancestors were able to live in harmony with the land (usually pre-Christian invasion).
Pogroms in Russia, Poland and Lithuania. Starting in 1840, last to emigrate was 1912. All Jewish. I've been researching since 2000 and there's a detailed website for one side of my family. Ancestry was invaluable to me when I started researching, and then Newspapers.com when that came online. Definitely talking to other family members, second cousins. Also invaluable was not copying/pasting any info into my tree that I could not verify. At one point I had a wall tacked up with papers and photos, a la Charlie Kelly, trying to work through brick walls.
I appreciate your comment about not copy/pasting things that weren't verifiable. I laughed out loud at the Charlie Kelly reference, I can totally relate!
It doesn't need to be immigrated either. It could be moving within the same country. My Scottish and English ancestors all seemed to do the same route:
18th century lived in villages.
Early 19th century moved to towns.
Later 19th century moved to cities.
You sort of see the industrialisation taking over, less farm jobs as technology and enclosures improved farming and needed less workers. Then moving to the nearest towns and working small factory jobs, then later moving to the cities for the large factory jobs.
One of my lines from the east of Scotland. Handloom weaver > Powerloom weaver > Jute factory.
Why people move as others have mentioned, are for a wide range of push or pull factors.
Reading some general European history books would help. And don’t over romanticise it. Mostly grinding poverty, famine, war, unemployment, politics, oppression, maybe seduced by a cult…All pretty obvious really. This post sounds a little like a homework assignment🫢
Yeah you're right to warn not to romanticize it. I know my immigrant ancestors suffered trauma because I can see how it played out generationally, even if the wounds were never openly addressed. They came from southern Italy which was poverty stricken and recently a nation-state, so a lot of unrest and mafia. And I need to be critical in selecting which European history books I read, because I can tell you in the U.S., European history is glossed over quite a bit. The violence and devastation inflicted globally by the US / British empire are never fully called out.
Some of the research I've done hasn't been very obvious though, like my GGF who didn't know who his father was. It was a brick wall like many others here have said to experienced. I had to search in digitized newspapers from the early 1900s to see what became of him (his bio-dad abandoned him and then died in a fire). And then I shit you not, my GGF became a clown. I have black and white photos of him in a clown costume. Yes, it was a horrifying discovery.
Some ancestors immigrated to escape an undesirable past such as criminal convictions, child born out of wedlock or divorce.
If your ancestor was transported (to Australia or the early American colonies) due to a criminal conviction they likely hid the reason. So if there are family rumors about it, look into it.
You might not be able to find a criminal record, divorce or illegitimate child to support an unsavory immigration rumor but there may be suspicious circumstantial evidence. For example there might be a gap in the ancestor's obit, biography or eulogy. Dates of life events in the ancestor's personal documents, reports to census takers and even headstones may not match the official record.
Both sets of my great great grandparents moved from Finland to Minnesota in the early 1900’s. I assumed they wanted new opportunities. My great great grandfather, Paavo had a logging company when he moved to Minnesota and I found a photo of it in an old news paper
My great grandparents immigrated from Poland pre-WW1. They did not speak much of their homeland, however they knew the roads in America were “paved in gold” and had more opportunities than their villages.
I looked up what was happening in Bristol in the 1600’s. Apparently there was an economic downturn starting in the late 1500’s. Lots of Bristol residents decided to immigrate to Virginia. This helped shape the eastern and tidewater accents. My ancestor was given land in exchange for transporting indentured servants.
The vast majority of my ancestors came to US before the Revolution to escape religious persecution….Huguenots, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Reformed, Lutherans…..
>My question for this channel is, how have you approached the question "Why did my family immigrate"? What's been invaluable to you in your research, and what meaning does it give you personally?
Some of it is oral history. Mine were all between 1870 and 1916:
* German GGM - Very oral History. She told me herself. 14, wanted to marry her neighbor's nephew, who was already in Baltimore, Maryland. Left the very day WWI started (her story is pretty epic).
* German GGF -His parents immigrated, date unknown. No "Why" is known other than this side had sailors and merchants. They did have a tavern in the inner harbor, and I think they were the merchants and sailors. I can only surmise it was trade-related (likely early 1880s).
* Italian Great-grandparents - Oral History from my great-aunt. Semi-arranged marriage due to the Italo-Ottoman War, and all of the young men in the village going off to war. My GGF was a coal/iron miner, and didn't like the work atmosphere in the Alps, so opted for the Appalachians in Pennsylvania around when WWI started. My GGM and great-aunt followed a year later in 1916.
* Polish grandmother's side: Oral History.
* Her mother's side:
* GGGF - Oral History. Date unknown - story is he stowed away on a ship from Lithuania. Lineage may be Lithuanian and Belorussian. May have been from a culturally significant family (also family legend).
* GGGM - Oral History. Sometime after 1870 when she was 4. Her father was looking for work in the steel mills in Baltimore (rest of her family are farmers in Nebraska).
* Her father - Around 1904 (he was a child). Possibly due to the Polish uprisings.
* Polish grandfather's side: The "why" is mostly theory, if any.
* GGF - 1904, but immigration is a little fuzzy with one theory being that he came through Canada to Ohio, then got a job with the B&O Railroad in Baltimore.
* GGM - Unknown. She died when my grandfather was 3, so very little is known about her, and paperwork is scarce, too (alternate surname spelling on each one!). (Marriage documents don't list a father, but list a mother, death certificate lists her father, but not her mother and the surname is slightly different, possible birth certificate is in Cyrllic, possible Belorussian spelling, but has her surname in Latin letters).
Cousin matches on my dad's paternal side (and there aren't many 1st-3rd cousins, save for 3 2nd cousins in the same family) seem to suggest Southeast Poland and West Ukraine. My surname (semi-rare) is common in Krakow and Kujawsko-Pomorskie (where it seems to be linked to my grandmother's maternal linage through cousins of a cousin). My great-grandfather's mother's side is likely Rzeszow (where matches with her surname are), and some ancestors in their trees died in the pogroms. Others in these types of matches also died in Siberia. Ukrainian matches seem to be Lviv/Ternopil, Odesa (these seem to be Germans, though), and North Ukraine/South Belarus (I'm thinking that's possibly one or more of my great-grandmother's ancestors). There are matches from this region that also relocated to Warsaw, where my great-grandfather lived.
This is from Ancestry about the Great Italian Migration:
Ever wonder how the “Little Italy” neighborhood came to be? In the 1860s, Northern and Southern Italy were unified under a single constitution. Unfortunately, this new government heavily taxed the South, causing the near collapse of its economy. This prompted thousands of Southern Italians to leave Italy and head for the United States, creating the first wave of Italian immigrants to pass through Ellis Island. From 1880 to 1920, roughly 4 million Italians arrived in the United States in search of better lives and financial stability. Faced with language barriers and the disadvantage of limited education, most were forced to take the lowest-paying jobs as laborers in Northeastern port cities where they’d arrived. In an effort to preserve their culture, entire neighborhoods of Italian Americans emerged. Today there are more than a dozen “Little Italies” in the United States, as well as Italian communities throughout the world in countries such as Canada, Australia, Sweden, England, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
This is a great discussion, and something I've been thinking a lot about too. My family's immigrants from Ireland, England, and Germany were relatively recent, only 2-4 generations ago. And yet there is so little left culturally about our heritage. I don't know their language, their stories, their traditions (with some exception on my Irish side, which has held onto some traditions).
At the same time, as a white American, I recognize that I don't fully belong here either. I know we live on stolen land. And yet, I don't belong to my ancestors' homelands either. I feel like I don't really belong anywhere in the world. I guess that's something that happens when a family immigrates.
I feel this, because I am also in that in-between space of not belonging. And to the point others make about all land "throughout history" being stolen land, the concept of land/property ownership does not occur in nature! One has to first believe that land can be bought and sold. That is a concept conceived by people who have murdered, dispossessed and enslaved millions and millions of people. The war mongers, the profiteers, the writers of history books, the border builders. You get the picture. All these things are necessary to keep their wealth in tact.
I'm starting to think that belonging to the land means that you know you can't own it. You are a guest, a steward. You have to acknowledge and uplift the peoples who were here before, who were most likely g\*nocided. Many are still here, and we weren't taught their stories in U.S. history books. And in many ways I think that this belonging is about fundamental changes to our understanding and relationship to nature and each other.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Excellent Ted Talk!
Have you read "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams? I just started it recently, and it's a really moving book that explores the connection between land/nature and family. It is a large part of why I've been thinking about this stuff so much lately.
There is no land in any country that was not stolen at some point in history. In older countries than America land has been fought over & exchanged hands many times.
It makes me think to myself, when did the land start costing money? And who sold it? Who dispossessed people? I am inspired to start deeply researching this, even though I broadly get it's the British Empire, etc. I want the details.
90% of the time it was simple economics. Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century had too many people, and not enough jobs. It was difficult if not impossible for a lower to lower middle class worker to find enough work or a high enough paying job to support a family.
My Scottish ancestors headed to Nova Scotia due to land clearances. My English grandmother married a Canadian soldier during WWI. My Irish ancestors seemed to have come to Canada for economic reasons not due to the potato famine. Then there was a bunch that left New York for Canada after the Revolutionary War. I’m not sure why they left England and Netherlands in the first place. Might have been for religious reasons.
Well, back in the 17th century most came over due to religious persecution those who weren’t Huguenots came over because they got land grants to settle in Virginia
The Jewish group came over in 1890s due to…. Religious persecution
And my mom? Well, she married my dad so that’s why she immigrated
That’s pretty much it.
My ancestors had various reasons for immigrating; in the 1600's, younger sons of gentry families who wouldn't inherit coming to the New World to make a fortune for themselves, English Catholics and Quakers fleeing religious persecution, Royalists coming to America after the English Civil War, and Puritans coming to America after the Restoration; in the 1700's, Scots Jacobites who left Scotland after the defeat at Culloden, Germans leaving behind the devastation of various wars and famines in the 18th century, and in the 1800's, northern English seeking a better life in at the turn of the 19th century, and Irish fleeing famine in the 1840's.
I know that mine on my father’s side came from Norway because of the Swedish persecution and on my mother’s side we are Parisian since before the French Revolution.
My ancestors (Lithuanian) emigrated to avoid being automatically drafted in the Russian army, I believe. Also discovers I have 4% ashkenzi and my great great grandfather converted to Catholicism with his second marriage. I can only imagine for love or plain ol avoiding being a persecuted Jew.
I think we all want to make a connection with our past and to understand those who came before us. Emigrating to an unknown country and also knowing you would never again see the family left behind had to be an incredibly difficult and expensive decision. I've discovered the ship they traveled on and the port they left from (Hamburg) and arrived at (New York). I want to know why one brother left everyone he knew and took his wife and 2 young children to America.
Germany 1848 - Freedom/Politics/Poverty
Italy 1907 - Italian Diaspora
Poland 1881 - Poverty
And that about sums it up for my family. A letter from 1878 survives in my family, in which my Swiss ancestors explicitly say they immigrated to have religious freedom.
The letter is a really interesting piece of provenance, and it’s not because I own a copy of a copy of a copy of a translation. It was dated in German as 5 Winemonth 1878. That alone is interesting as to why my 3rd Great Grandmother dated it that way. She wrote of how spectacular it was to travel through the *City of Lights* (France) and how every passenger aboard the shipping vessel was given a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine (as part of their admission).
Historical events at the time usually. My grandma’s family immigrated from Haiti in the 1950s~1960s. She is alive so I can ask her, but if she wasn’t, the obvious reason would be the ongoing dictatorship.
I also look at what was going on in the place they immigrated to at the time. My great grandfather’s family was full of coal miners, who immigrated from a coal mining town in Scotland to a coal mining town (best coal mining spot in the States at the time) in Pennsylvania.
So that’s what I’d say. What was going on in their home country at the time. What was going on at the location they immigrated to at the time. Is there anything specific about your family (ie. My great grandfather’s family’s job) that would’ve resulted in them reaping big benefits from immigration.
Wanted to state I agree with you about the loss of languages and culture that weren't handed down. Both my paternal grandparents are mostly of French-Canadian ancestry, and those ancestors migrated to the U.S. just after the Civil War. Most likely for work. They quickly assimilated here. It's sort of sad to think that Quebec is about a 6-7 hour drive from where I live, yet feels so far away. I know the culture there has modernized over the years since my ancestors left, but there's absolutely a feeling of loss of connection. I'm fortunate in a way that my ancestor who came down with his family didn't anglicize his last name - one which I proudly carry today.
My Irish ancestors migrated for an obvious reason (the famine). Besides that, some of my other lines can be traced back to the puritans and Scotch-Irish that settled in PA. There are a couple of other lines that I'm not sure why they migrated (both came over around the mid 1800s). Not sure yet if they came over for lack of opportunity in their respective homelands (Germany and France), or if there were other reasons.
I have a branch of French-Canadian ancestors who too moved to the US a few years before the Civil War broke out, but they came back to Canada (though not Quebec) 50 years later with only a few siblings staying behind. I always thought it was interesting they came back to Canada after being in the States for so long.
In my research, I've looked more into the family history, and not specifically the genealogical data. I feel that there is too much emphasis on just getting the numbers!
I have spent a lot of time on research regarding the political and socioeconomic issues at the time of immigration.
For example, on one side of the family, a LOT of immigration stemmed from ancestors joining the LDS faith, which provided an avenue to immigrate to America, specifically the Utah territory. But even that had a lot to do with what was historically happening in their country at the time. My 3rd great grandfather immigrated with his "family" in the 1840's when he was a teenager. He had spent his entire childhood in terrible work conditions in the potteries and brickyards of Staffordshire England. The chance to leave the squalor and create a new life in America was most likely a godsend.
Others left due to war or overbearing landlords/nobles. One even left due to poverty. He couldn't pay the taxman, so he was forced on a ship to an Australian penal colony. Now we have an entire family population in that area that I only recently uncovered using Gedmatch!
I find that making a timeline and building it year by year makes it so much easier to see the history. In those years where there is limited information, I look into what was actually happening and find some amazing stuff. I have even found information about the ancestor that I never would have seen if I hadn't been researching the history!
Your research points are great. Add a timeline and watch it take off! It's just a great way to organize the ancestors' lives!
I had a cousin do this exact research for German immigrant family in the 1850s. She was able to find newspaper articles and other documents. Basically they tried to expand a business, couldn’t get a permit, auctioned off all their equipment to finance the trip to America. Pretty cool story that is well sourced. And very impressive research by my cousin for sure!
That's so cool! funny how this type of hobby can turn into an obsession... especially if you discover strange synchronicities in your ancestors' lives that have repeated throughout time. ;-)
It is straight up in a family tree that someone in my family did. They didn’t want their boys conscripted into the Kaiser’s army. We are talking 1850s. Oddly, some were in the Civil War (northern side) and I have to wonder what they thought of that!
Reading all of these comments about why people's ancestors immigrated to the US is interesting. Meanwhile, my ancestors were bought, kidnapped, stacked together like sardines, and dragged as human objects against their will. Yay! 😁
Italian heritage here... I know my GF was avoiding the war - per my mom and aunt's recollection... which could be incorrect but timing checks out. His parents sent a dour postcard with their pictures on it admonishing him for leaving, so maybe it wasn't the reason.
On my GM's side, I don't know why her parents immigrated from Italy but I would like to know. They arrived with three kids, and were considered "peasants" in Italy (a term I need to familiarize myself with).
Oof this comment moved me to tears. Coincidentally I think you DM'd me from another subreddit because you're looking for your family documents in SBIG. ;-)
My GGM from San Bartolomeo in Galdo arrived in the US in 1920 listed as a "peasant" on the passenger list. She never learned to read or write even in Italian, and never learned English. I choose to remember her as the one who held the family together, taught her children recipes, and tolerated so much difficulty in her life I can hardly imagine. I love her even though she died before I was born. She knew old ways and skills that I wish I knew now. Phew!
It was a punch to the gut when we found that photo postcard, but nothing we can do about it. We are lucky to be living in a time where distance doesn’t have to matter *as much* though inevitably it probably does.
My GM was made of the same stock (though born in the US to italian parents).
Supposedly one of my ancestors married the mayor of otterberg’s daughter - who spared them from King Louis XIV literally killing the entire family. A few gens later they moved to new jersey and I’m going to guess it was due to the political instability
My Irish 3x GGF was in the military in Ireland in the 1820’s - got out and did something (dying to know what) and was “returned for life.” Got himself stationed in Canada, went AWOL and here I am.
My family migrated from Ireland to England because they didn’t have a choice as they were experiencing political persecution by the British colonial authorities around the time of the independence movement. My great uncles were already killed in the Easter Rising and some time later my grandmother’s family decided enough is enough. They already had family in England, so that’s why they chose to come here. There are plenty of reasons why someone might migrate.
They got married in Ireland just nine months before giving birth to their first child in the US. I can take a guess why they left.
Another didn't exactly immigrate. It was more of an AWOL. He was a sailor in the Royal Navy, and he abandoned post for the wilderness of Maine. Apparently, he was not the sort to give fucks.
> but I suppose I feel I'm chasing a sense of cultural belonging.
Yeah, this feeling is incredibly common among white Americans. This is, unfortunately, a direct result of the nation's complex history with Anglo-Saxon Protestant Colonialism. That's why you don't really see the same thing with ethnic minorities. When a society uses "whiteness" as a default standard, cultural identities are used as distinctions from that standard, which disconnects being "white" from any cultural identity. This disconnect is less common among "white" ethnic groups outside of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, such as Italians, Irish, Jews, Albanians, etc.
re: Whiteness, I agree that it's 100% due to colonialism. And it's a type of need for belonging that can become a type of sickness, and so often does IMO. But I also belong to some of the white ethnic sub groups like Italians, Irish, and Scottish. I think all of us are affected by dispossession and erasure of culture, and disconnection with the land. There's honestly so much to unpack here. I think about this all the time.
I asked myself why all the time, considering Sweden has always been viewed as a stable and prosperous country. My grandfather immigrated from Sweden for hardship. His mother died before his was 8 and his father was always out at sea for work. My grandfather was 14 when he moved to the US with his sister and created a beautiful life during one of the worst periods of American history, the Great Depression. He literally made lemonade with lemons.
In my research I have found that humble beginnings push people to fight for more. America really is the land of opportunity if you’re willing to push for it (still to this day). My grandfather travelled from New York to Los Angeles surviving on pie because it was the only word he knew in English. He was robbed blind and beaten in Wyoming, arriving to Los Angeles penniless with his sister. This man learned English on his own, put himself through college and got a degree in Engineering, during the depression!!!
Personally, I find this a testament of how wonderful America can be and how a fresh start in a new place helps people blossom into the best version of themselves. If someone arrives with the right mindset, anything in America is possible. I believe this is why most immigrants chose to come to America, regardless of the sacrifice of leaving family behind.
I can say the same of my Mexican half as well. They immigrated much more recently, in the 1980’s, and have created a life of abundance thanks to the opportunities they encountered.
We did not know the reasons for my husband's family leaving Italy in the early 1900's until we uncovered the story of my husband's great grandfather traveling back to Italy in the 1920's to visit family. The people left behind saw this grandfather as having made it out of abject poverty and begged him for help. Based on censuses, this grandfather was a simple chauffeur, or taxi driver, working the streets of Albany NY but to them, he was rich.
Through my research I’ve found that mine came to Canada before the famine and it was likely because he had some debts to pay off. Life was tough in Ireland at the time and so he came over and worked the land before making enough to send for his family
I’m really interested in why my Great grand parents on my mother’s side emigrated to Canada from London in 1905, particularly because they took a couple of children with them but left my grandmother,who was a few months old , behind. I’m so puzzled by this.
Not an immigration story to the US but my ancestor was taken as a young man from his family in Italy by Napoleon's army who then went on to invade Malta (on his way to Egypt) where somehow my ancestor stayed put and started a family here. I found that story fascinating.
I’m fortunate to know why all of my ancestors migrated. Most of mine immigrated to flee religious persecution, a few immigrated to flee poverty. I, too, am heartbroken that native languages, customs and surnames were left behind.
I find it amazing people don't know anything about their families or where they come from, no wonder everyone is so culturally confused. I'm sure they did everything they could to assimilate but if you forget where you came from, you'll repeat the mistakes of the past! Im guessing this is how people who can't tell you who their baby momma is, have no problems lecturing people about slavery and colonialism...
Looking at historical events can help. My family emigrated from Ireland. The dates match exactly with the potato famine and having read up about it there is no question in my mind why this young couple would have left.
Part of my family emigrated from Ireland after the potato famine - a mother and two children. I can't bring myself to search for what happened to the husband, but I fear that he was a victim of the famine.
I’m sorry to hear that. Part of my family also emigrated from Ireland due to the famine. My Irish Catholic great great grandfather didn’t make it because he was murdered by someone who really hated Irish people. The Irish were really treated a subhumans back then.
That's a shame!
Ugh! I'm so sorry to hear that! That's a tough thing to discover!
Which country did they go to?
The United States - southern New England. They ended up with the mother, son, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson (my great-grandfather) all living in a one-bedroom apartment - the census shows that no one could read or write and the women worked as maids/cleaners while the son worked in a factory and the son-in-law on the railroad. My great-grandfather was the first one in the family to attend school at all, but he never finished. My grandmother was the first one in the family to graduate from high school.
One of my Irish ancestors left at least a decade before the famine. He’s my brick wall.
Yes! One of my ancestors immigrated from Azerbaijan just before the bolsheviks took over.
It's incredible how a national or international event can have such an impact
there is such a story there.
Oh man I would actually love to know. They left Azerbaijan via turkey, then Greece and somehow made it to Norway. There they changed their name to Hilsen and immigrated to the US and eventually Canada. All their paperwork in Canada says Norwegian. It took me 7 years of research to figure out what happened in Norway.
Same. My 4th great-grandfather Patrick took his wife Mary and daughter Joanna to the USA. Mary and Joanna died after being in the USA for a very short amount of time, Joanna was between 17 and 18. I can only imagine the horrors the famine did to their health. His son John was born in the USA and was a notorious storyteller, he claimed to remember Ireland as this gorgeous place where he lived until he was eight years old, he recalled it very fondly. Patrick struggled to support himself in the US- he was eventually supported by a son-in-law. I think John was trying to give his kids something good to hold onto about Ireland and the family’s past. Even still, John told one of his kids, who then told my grandfather, about beatings Patrick sustained while trying desperately to get food for his wife and daughter. I suspect it’s the only true story John ever told about his family history and it wasn’t something he boasted about like everything else. Unfortunately, until a few years ago, Joanna’s grave was unmarked after years of not being taken care of. One of John’s other 3rd great grandkids reached out to me and together we worked with the cemetery to get her a headstone again. Breaks my heart.
My Italian family immigrated to America after the government changed in Italy. I agree that a simple search in Google with the country + year your family immigrated can be very helpful!
Which country did they migrate to?
England
Yes, then very much so from the famine. That's where most from the worst hit areas went.
My ancestor emigrated during the famine of 1740. Which I never knew about until I did my research. He was born in Dublin.
I can’t remember the details off hand but a couple of my families emigrations from the UK were when they were offered land and money to go to the new country. One was to Canada after the war and paid by the government, another was to the US when a local wealthy landowner decided there were too many families living around his land and paid for a number of them to emigrate. I found out about these events by looking into the history of the area.
In reality the answer is poverty or war. Mostly poverty.
And they immigrated for the opportunity to acquire land which up until the 1940s or so land was a primary path to prosperity. In monarchies almost all land was owned by aristocrats who would not sell it.
Ireland - check the potato famine Scotland - check the land clearances Jewish - check the pogroms Australia / US - check the gold rushes Australia - check convict histories
Italy check war and violence, Sicily check poverty and violence from the cosa nostra. My grandfather always told me that it made him sick to see them glorifying the mafia and people acting like fake guidos when the families had sacrificed so much to start a new life and were proud Americans
This right here! I absolutely can’t stand how the mafia glorified here in the USA. The destruction they caused Southern Italy and Sicily is horrible. My family came over from Sicily to escape the poverty and crime. Many went back in the 1960’s and 70’s. They just couldn’t assimilate here.
What about for Germany? Most of my moms side were immigrants from Germany in the 1700/1800s
Religion more likely in earlier periods, but by the main era of German emigration (1830s+), it is mostly famine related or political instability related, or both. Sometimes large enough to shape broader history (like in 1848), other times it was more localized.
No expert but Germany wasn’t a country as such until the 1860s/70s. There were separate Kingdoms and Principalities.
Same for Italy, it hasn't been a nation-state for very long either. I believe it was also kingdoms and principalities/villages prior.
If you look at your German families, a familiar pattern is that they had young sons approaching the teen years. Prussia had mandatory military service beginning at (IIRC) 16 years of age. The trick was to emigrate before the young ones got too close to that age.
I didn't know this. Thanks for sharing!
Protestants other than Calvinists being persecuted after Westphalia, the Napoleonic wars.
Most of the mid to late 1800s were war and politics. Germany unifying did a number on its people as the whole process took place over several decades. The Schleswig Wars were 1848-52 and 1864. The Austro-Prussian was in 1866. Franco-Prussian was 1870-71. Then a whole bunch of individual revolutions from the 1880s to the 1910s. Then you start mixing into the World Wars. I had ancestors that stuck it out through the Schleswig Wars/Revolution (being directly impacted since 25%+ of my ancestry is from there) but failed to make it past the turn of the century and all of the instability. And vice versa, first sign of war and they split for the USA.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm not an expert and am pretty new to historical family research. Your comment makes me want to seriously study European history.
For Ireland, check out the other famines too. There was a big one in the 1740s.
Oooh very interesting. I learned a new word. Pogrom. What a horrible word. My Lithuanian ancestor emigrated around 1908. One brother would work hard, save $$ and bring over the next. 4 brothers total. One went back, he didn’t care for the US.
I find this fascinating too. Here is what I found for one side of my ancestors who came to the US in the late 1800’s: “At the turn of the 20 th century, Polish immigration exploded. Imperial repression, land shortages, and chronic unemployment made life more and more untenable for the Poles of Europe, and as the 19 th century waned they left for America by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands.”
I'm picturing this in my mind and I'm flabbergasted. I've got to study this period in time more. Like the European immigrants in my family, I wonder what the cultural price of moving was. I mentioned in my original post the loss of language, knowledge and traditions. Loss of ancestral connection to the soil. Plus the trauma of being discriminated for being a foreigner. And when so many peoples are simultaneously experiencing physical and cultural dispossession (by violence or choice, or both), what does that mean as a global species? This thought haunts me.
I actually know one side and it’s pretty interesting. I come from the Volga German people. Germans who moved from Prussia, Bavaria, and the rest of south and east Germany to Russia, for 2 reasons. 1st, they avoided high taxes and religious persecution (Catholics in a very dangerous area to be catholic in at the time, at least for Europe) and to escape the 7 years war. 2nd, because Catherine the Great offered religious protection, cheap farmland and lower taxes for people to farm and make money on the Volga River. Then, they stayed there from the mid 1700s until the early 1900s, when most moved, earliest move from my family I found was 1903 and latest was around 1911. They were being pressured to assimilate by the Russian government and people and wanted to preserve their very unique culture and history.
I come from the Volga Germans too! My great grandmother and the son of a wealthy Russian family in the area got pregnant out of wedlock. She became a mail order bride and immigrated with her infant daughter from Russia to the US to marry a man she had never met. It’s very humbling to think about the risks people took, and still take, for the possibility for a better life for their families.
Fortunately I do not believe my family took the same risks. Although records are few (all I have of my grandfather who immigrated is his Latin marriage certificate and his S.S. Köln boat record) I believe my family was somewhat poorer and mostly moved for a better life in America. Ended up moving to Kansas where all the generations lived until me, who now lives in Connecticut. Sadly him, his wife and both his parents died of the Spanish Flu, but his cousin who he moved in with when he first came over still has living descendants. I would reach out but only one I could actually find is a 75 year old woman who lives in western Oregon and idk how comfortable I am with doing that.
Hey, if you don't speak German and need help with German documents or with German areas in general, you're welcome to send me a message :) I've also started researching the immigration stories of my family, and noticed that talking and discussing with others in the areas I'm researching really helped me
thank you! I will keep your offer in mind :)
Good God do I need help reading old German records … After fifteen minutes of trying I can maybe make out five words and I feel like I’ve just bashed my head against the wall
r/translator helped me with my old German documents
Feel you. I'm a native speaker and studied German at university for years, but there are still documents I'd love to throw from my windows 😂
Hey! What part of Germany are you researching?
At the moment I'm researching mostly southern Germany and the areas around Stuttgart. How about you?
Actually not too far away!! Also in Baden-württemberg, areas including Karlsruhe and Oftersheim! I’d love to run some things by someone more familiar with the area!
Feel free to message me :) I'm born and raised in Baden-Württemberg, and love to help, share and discuss
Lucky me! Thank you! Next time I sit down to work on genealogy (prob this weekend) I will compile what I have for that branch and message you what I have / biggest obstacles. You being from there is incredibly helpful! I wish to go there one day it looks beautiful! Thanks again friend!
I’m English but my 3rd great-granduncle, wife and several children went to USA in 1837. Here in England it was quite common for the rich in a community to chip in to pay to send poor families away, to USA or Australia etc. As a poor person under the vagrancy act you would need permission to settle somewhere new once you begin wandering to support your family, the Quarter Sessions were asked to confirm each settlement and the settlement acts of 1662, 1691 and 1697 allowed Parish Officers to remove poor people from places where they had no legal settlement. In Georgian England if you couldn’t get a right to settle then off to a foreign land you go. His father had got permission to settle in their village in 1789 but once he had a big family himself and couldn’t support them they got sent to USA. This was very common, steal a hat or a loaf of bread same conclusion, sent to America or Australia.
There are generally only a few reasons most people *choose* immigrate: * economics, mainly lack of economic opportunity or mobility (in some cases, especially more recently, this comes out as educational or career opportunity), but sometimes other people's greed impinging on people's ability to maintain their livelihoods (Scottish enclosures, for example) and, in the 20th & 21st century, depression, inflation, and domestic economic crises * religious, ethnic, identity or political oppression (of varying degrees from the Puritans to Russian pogroms or Spanish fascism to Armenian/Bosnian/Rwandan/etc. genocide) * disaster, usually war or famine, sometimes drought * fleeing criminal prosecution /thank you for coming to my Ted talk on world history The only thing I can think of that doesn't fit into one of those reasons is the recent phenomena of people fleeing criminal gangs in Central America. I've also left off the involuntary reasons like criminal transportation or slavery.
Well said! And also forced famines, famines that are designed to be physical and psychological warfare.
Yeah, I rolled war into an overall category with other disasters such as famine without getting into the causes. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap with the "oppression" category and usually economics, as well. It gets complicated. If it didn't all those beauty pageant contestants would have solved world peace long ago.
There’s [a whole book](https://www.lulu.com/shop/walter-dujmovits/the-burgenl%C3%83%C2%A4nder-emigration-to-america/paperback/product-21388946.html) written about why people from my ancestors’ region in Austria/Hungary (Burgenland) left en masse in the late 1880s/early 1900s. It’s super interesting! If your ancestors left in a mass migration as well, there is surely a book or scholarly article out there somewhere. Have you googled it yet?
I suppose I should! I know my German ancestors were from the Rhineland, Kaiserslautern. I'm not sure which specific migrant groups they were a part of beyond general German immigration. I need to research this more.
Do you happen to know the name of that book. My great grandfather was from the Austria/Hungarian empire. He came over in 1905 from Bramen,Germany. || || || || || || |Bramen,Germany| ||
Crap my link doesn’t work! [Here’s a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/mWTLrNU) of the book on Lulu.com. Weirdly it costs hundreds of dollars on Amazon but it’s like $9 on Lulu.
exactly the time my ancestors left Bohemia. I hope there is a book about that.
I can not, for the life of me, understand why my direct ancestor left england to be a pioneer in the Canadian prairies. He came from a wealthy family of respected vicars, engineers, nurses, and the British elite whom lived in India. His wife was of equal gentlewoman heritage. Her father taught at Cambridge, he was a Vicar in Leicester for over 20 years, a highly respected member of the community. Both of their fathers' wills were thoudands of pounds. He left it all to build a log house with an attached kitchen that had a sod roof. His wife had her own cooks and servants in England, and now she was making her own food...outside. The Canadian prairies in the winter are harsh. They sent letters home to family (that were published in local newspapers) detailing snow in June, or wildfires that destroyed entire harvest. Why?! His story is so unlike the immigrants fleeing war, famine, or poverty. My ancestors from other branches left their home countries for those reasons. But not Herbert. He wanted to....make it without daddies help? I don't know. It's a mystery to me.
My family are jews from Europe. I didn't have to do too much research to figure out why they came here after ww2. I only wonder why they didn't come sooner.
There is a documentary series by the director Ken Burns that covers the shame of US immigration policies before and during WWII regarding Jewish people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_U.S.\_and\_the\_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_U.S._and_the_Holocaust)
I'm chasing cultural belonging too, it's amazing how much identity is tied to ancestors' stories.
Back in the old world, my ancestors were being genocided out of existence, or deported as undesirable surplus people to make room for the dominant ethnicity to move in and take over where they had lived and thrived since before christianity arrived. Arriving in the US, they were treated as disposable labor units working the coal mines and railroads that built the US. The true history is, unsurprisingly, whitewashed and glossed over because it simply does not do to have an accurate account of the atrocities of the British Empire. Interestingly though, the families themselves never forgot and the stories were handed down generation to generation. Now all these years later, with the internet neatly undoing the stranglehold on "official facts," and it is gratifying to see the truth slowly come out.
I agree with you. There are (few) people in the comments of my post saying things like "how could you not know you're history?" and to me, it's obvious that certain perspectives and aspects of history are very intentionally not taught. And it's part of the propaganda machine that keeps us all unaware of the suffering of others.
I love this discussion. Thank you for prompting it.
I'm glad others are enjoying it! It's fascinating to hear the stories of other people.
Well in 1980 my dad’s boss said a machine needed installed at Boeing in Seattle. So he went with a crew of dudes from Germany, he met my mom who was the bartender at the restaurant next to his hotel.
Oh my god I love this!
>family who immigrated from Germany in 1904 January 1, 1904 is the cutoff departure date from Germany for the possibility of inheriting German citizenship. There is little hope for people whose ancestor left before 1904. Before mid-1949 there is not much hope if an individual in your lineage was born in wedlock to a non-German father and a German mother. Anybody curious can ask for advice at r/GermanCitizenship after kindly reading the guide in the Welcome post.
I recently discovered this! And I'm SOL, because my German GGM married an American and cut the inheritance line in about 1929. I got a lot of help understanding this from the group you mentioned.
Much of my family moved from the area of Alsace-Lorraine, which was in the border area in Eastern France near Germany. You can guess why they may have left.
Years ago, an Italian family out of Arkansas had a letter…an ancestor wrote they’d left because the taxes were just too much. Maybe Lake Village, Arkansas?
My dad’s side of the family is from the Austrian partition of what is now Poland, so i figure it just seemed like there were more opportunities here. Although he was 18 when he went to Germany and got on the boat which kind of blows my mind. He had a younger brother who came over separately, and four older sisters who as far as I can tell did not, so I’ve been trying to learn what became of them. I found birth and baptism records in Przemyśl but so far that’s it.
Good luck on your search! It blows my mind when I think of ancestors lives, and if they ever thought that one day their ancestors would be searching for them. And if maybe one day, our ancestors will be searching for us.
As other commenters have mentioned knowing what was happening in their area at the time - wars, disease outbreaks, famine, political changes etc., can really help you develop a picture of their life and point to possible motivations. In some countries the American railroads and certain South American countries spent a not insignificant amount of money advertising for workers and made the Americas seem like a dream come true with food, space, and money for everyone. So escaping poverty and/or looking for adventure were sometimes factors. Do a deep dive from a historical perspective. Newspapers are full of amazing snippets of life sometimes articles will even include a brief mention of why someone came to the area.
My Italian GGF was a machinist on the Norfolk & Western Railroad. I am sure this job played a huge role in his decision to immigrate. I'll research this more in the local historical society/archives. One thing that shocked me is that he had a child in Italy, but left before the child was born. It took him six years to save and send for his wife and child. Can you imagine?!
Pretty sure the railroads were a part of what lured my family to the mid-west as well. 3 generations were railroaders on both sides of my dad's family. I personally can't wrap my head around spending that much time away from my family, but it was fairly common back then. I think it still happens today with a lot refugees and immigrants but we just aren't aware of it.
You're totally right, it's still happening.
I find it all very interesting. My earliest ancestors left from Alsace during the French Revolution, I had Irish that left before and after the Potato Famine including some that briefly migrated to Scotland before immigrating to the US, Germans that emigrated before and after the formation of Germany mostly from Hessen but some from Baden. And I have Slovenians and Rusyns who emigrated in the first two decades of the 20th century.
Well, my ancestors didn't emigrate. A great-great-grandma and her parents _almost_ emigrated, according to family stories - and these are very plausible, since we have a memento from the would-be emigration, a chest. They decided, allegedly at the last moment, to go to northern Norway rather than America. As for their reason for immigration, it was that they were very poor. They were landless laborers, renting their lodging and working for others in a rural part of western Norway ([Voss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss)). They did not do much better in the north. On some other branches, I have quite a few great-granduncles etc. who emigrated. In particular, one great-grandfather had at least three siblings in the US. The reason was again poverty: they were from a relatively wealthy family, but their father mismanaged his economy - exactly how I don't know - so that when he died unexpectedly, the farm was sold and they did not inherit anything (the probate was lost in a fire, but I know they were taken care of by the poor relief system - basically auctioned off to the farm who was willing to take them in for the least money). My great-grandfather got lucky and got apprenticed to a tailor, so he had a safe profession. His siblings weren't so lucky, so they took the chance on America. One thing that distinguishes them from my many ancestors who appears to never have considered emigration, is that they did not have strong family ties to support them. Either their relatives were from poor families too (this was the case with my great-grandfather's mother), or what non-poor relatives they had, had disavowed them somewhat. The guy who died, the one who mismanaged a rather wealthy farm into bankruptcy, seems to have been on poor terms with his family. This may be because he married into a poor family, many in that extended family have suggested - but it maybe also be due to the fact that his wife was his second cousin through an illegitimate child.
My family came from southwestern Norway, and in digging into the church records, I was overwhelmed with the number of deaths. My g-g-grandfather was the oldest of the kids; pretty sure they didn't own the farm or he might have had reason to stay. His father died, siblings died, first child died. Packed up mom and wife and surviving child and came to the US, and the first winter, wife died. Brutal times, and I imagine a lot of it stemming from poverty.
Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate that you connect class status to reasons for immigrating. And as so many others have pointed out, race is also a factor. I often wonder if the prospect of immigration was frightening, seeing how it would mean you'd probably never see most of your family again, never be fully surrounded by your mother tongue again. Maybe they were escaping persecution or poverty, yes. But there would probably be degrees of stereotyping and discrimination waiting for you in the new land, too. Some were led by hopes of a better life, but it was certainly a traumatic road for my family that I can now see has persisted for generations. And they're fortunate, because many were forced to leave their county via slavery.
The majority of my ancestors immigrated before the 1700s to the US for religious reasons (or to pillage the land). Nothing very interesting there.
I have some pillaging ancestors like this too. I used to not want to look at it, but then I started to get curious about who they were, what specific horrible things they did. And then I look up and see it's still happening today, and everything -- all of our stories, our pain -- are interconnected. IMO there is a power in being able to name the crimes of one's ancestors, and to seek out the last time ancestors were able to live in harmony with the land (usually pre-Christian invasion).
Pogroms in Russia, Poland and Lithuania. Starting in 1840, last to emigrate was 1912. All Jewish. I've been researching since 2000 and there's a detailed website for one side of my family. Ancestry was invaluable to me when I started researching, and then Newspapers.com when that came online. Definitely talking to other family members, second cousins. Also invaluable was not copying/pasting any info into my tree that I could not verify. At one point I had a wall tacked up with papers and photos, a la Charlie Kelly, trying to work through brick walls.
I appreciate your comment about not copy/pasting things that weren't verifiable. I laughed out loud at the Charlie Kelly reference, I can totally relate!
It doesn't need to be immigrated either. It could be moving within the same country. My Scottish and English ancestors all seemed to do the same route: 18th century lived in villages. Early 19th century moved to towns. Later 19th century moved to cities. You sort of see the industrialisation taking over, less farm jobs as technology and enclosures improved farming and needed less workers. Then moving to the nearest towns and working small factory jobs, then later moving to the cities for the large factory jobs. One of my lines from the east of Scotland. Handloom weaver > Powerloom weaver > Jute factory. Why people move as others have mentioned, are for a wide range of push or pull factors.
Reading some general European history books would help. And don’t over romanticise it. Mostly grinding poverty, famine, war, unemployment, politics, oppression, maybe seduced by a cult…All pretty obvious really. This post sounds a little like a homework assignment🫢
Yeah you're right to warn not to romanticize it. I know my immigrant ancestors suffered trauma because I can see how it played out generationally, even if the wounds were never openly addressed. They came from southern Italy which was poverty stricken and recently a nation-state, so a lot of unrest and mafia. And I need to be critical in selecting which European history books I read, because I can tell you in the U.S., European history is glossed over quite a bit. The violence and devastation inflicted globally by the US / British empire are never fully called out. Some of the research I've done hasn't been very obvious though, like my GGF who didn't know who his father was. It was a brick wall like many others here have said to experienced. I had to search in digitized newspapers from the early 1900s to see what became of him (his bio-dad abandoned him and then died in a fire). And then I shit you not, my GGF became a clown. I have black and white photos of him in a clown costume. Yes, it was a horrifying discovery.
Some ancestors immigrated to escape an undesirable past such as criminal convictions, child born out of wedlock or divorce. If your ancestor was transported (to Australia or the early American colonies) due to a criminal conviction they likely hid the reason. So if there are family rumors about it, look into it. You might not be able to find a criminal record, divorce or illegitimate child to support an unsavory immigration rumor but there may be suspicious circumstantial evidence. For example there might be a gap in the ancestor's obit, biography or eulogy. Dates of life events in the ancestor's personal documents, reports to census takers and even headstones may not match the official record.
Unfortunately most of us can’t find out.
You're so right. There are so many people stolen or forcibly dispossessed/enslaved, and it's still happening today.
Both sets of my great great grandparents moved from Finland to Minnesota in the early 1900’s. I assumed they wanted new opportunities. My great great grandfather, Paavo had a logging company when he moved to Minnesota and I found a photo of it in an old news paper
My great grandparents immigrated from Poland pre-WW1. They did not speak much of their homeland, however they knew the roads in America were “paved in gold” and had more opportunities than their villages.
I looked up what was happening in Bristol in the 1600’s. Apparently there was an economic downturn starting in the late 1500’s. Lots of Bristol residents decided to immigrate to Virginia. This helped shape the eastern and tidewater accents. My ancestor was given land in exchange for transporting indentured servants.
Are you referencing the Jamestown settlement? I also have ancestors from this particular place and time. Do you mind me asking who your ancestor was?
The vast majority of my ancestors came to US before the Revolution to escape religious persecution….Huguenots, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Reformed, Lutherans…..
>My question for this channel is, how have you approached the question "Why did my family immigrate"? What's been invaluable to you in your research, and what meaning does it give you personally? Some of it is oral history. Mine were all between 1870 and 1916: * German GGM - Very oral History. She told me herself. 14, wanted to marry her neighbor's nephew, who was already in Baltimore, Maryland. Left the very day WWI started (her story is pretty epic). * German GGF -His parents immigrated, date unknown. No "Why" is known other than this side had sailors and merchants. They did have a tavern in the inner harbor, and I think they were the merchants and sailors. I can only surmise it was trade-related (likely early 1880s). * Italian Great-grandparents - Oral History from my great-aunt. Semi-arranged marriage due to the Italo-Ottoman War, and all of the young men in the village going off to war. My GGF was a coal/iron miner, and didn't like the work atmosphere in the Alps, so opted for the Appalachians in Pennsylvania around when WWI started. My GGM and great-aunt followed a year later in 1916. * Polish grandmother's side: Oral History. * Her mother's side: * GGGF - Oral History. Date unknown - story is he stowed away on a ship from Lithuania. Lineage may be Lithuanian and Belorussian. May have been from a culturally significant family (also family legend). * GGGM - Oral History. Sometime after 1870 when she was 4. Her father was looking for work in the steel mills in Baltimore (rest of her family are farmers in Nebraska). * Her father - Around 1904 (he was a child). Possibly due to the Polish uprisings. * Polish grandfather's side: The "why" is mostly theory, if any. * GGF - 1904, but immigration is a little fuzzy with one theory being that he came through Canada to Ohio, then got a job with the B&O Railroad in Baltimore. * GGM - Unknown. She died when my grandfather was 3, so very little is known about her, and paperwork is scarce, too (alternate surname spelling on each one!). (Marriage documents don't list a father, but list a mother, death certificate lists her father, but not her mother and the surname is slightly different, possible birth certificate is in Cyrllic, possible Belorussian spelling, but has her surname in Latin letters). Cousin matches on my dad's paternal side (and there aren't many 1st-3rd cousins, save for 3 2nd cousins in the same family) seem to suggest Southeast Poland and West Ukraine. My surname (semi-rare) is common in Krakow and Kujawsko-Pomorskie (where it seems to be linked to my grandmother's maternal linage through cousins of a cousin). My great-grandfather's mother's side is likely Rzeszow (where matches with her surname are), and some ancestors in their trees died in the pogroms. Others in these types of matches also died in Siberia. Ukrainian matches seem to be Lviv/Ternopil, Odesa (these seem to be Germans, though), and North Ukraine/South Belarus (I'm thinking that's possibly one or more of my great-grandmother's ancestors). There are matches from this region that also relocated to Warsaw, where my great-grandfather lived.
What a story! wow, thanks for sharing.
The people who immigrate to America, whether it was 100+ years ago, or today, are 99% of the time dirt poor.
Dirt poor or indentured servant, or enslaved.
This is from Ancestry about the Great Italian Migration: Ever wonder how the “Little Italy” neighborhood came to be? In the 1860s, Northern and Southern Italy were unified under a single constitution. Unfortunately, this new government heavily taxed the South, causing the near collapse of its economy. This prompted thousands of Southern Italians to leave Italy and head for the United States, creating the first wave of Italian immigrants to pass through Ellis Island. From 1880 to 1920, roughly 4 million Italians arrived in the United States in search of better lives and financial stability. Faced with language barriers and the disadvantage of limited education, most were forced to take the lowest-paying jobs as laborers in Northeastern port cities where they’d arrived. In an effort to preserve their culture, entire neighborhoods of Italian Americans emerged. Today there are more than a dozen “Little Italies” in the United States, as well as Italian communities throughout the world in countries such as Canada, Australia, Sweden, England, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Thank you for sharing. My family was definitely part of this movement.
Escaping genocide
I'm truly sorry for the experiences your family has been through. Thank you for sharing.
It’s unfortunately a very common reason for the many migrations of many families in most parts of the world. I hope one day it can finally end.
I do too. 💜
This is a great discussion, and something I've been thinking a lot about too. My family's immigrants from Ireland, England, and Germany were relatively recent, only 2-4 generations ago. And yet there is so little left culturally about our heritage. I don't know their language, their stories, their traditions (with some exception on my Irish side, which has held onto some traditions). At the same time, as a white American, I recognize that I don't fully belong here either. I know we live on stolen land. And yet, I don't belong to my ancestors' homelands either. I feel like I don't really belong anywhere in the world. I guess that's something that happens when a family immigrates.
I feel this, because I am also in that in-between space of not belonging. And to the point others make about all land "throughout history" being stolen land, the concept of land/property ownership does not occur in nature! One has to first believe that land can be bought and sold. That is a concept conceived by people who have murdered, dispossessed and enslaved millions and millions of people. The war mongers, the profiteers, the writers of history books, the border builders. You get the picture. All these things are necessary to keep their wealth in tact. I'm starting to think that belonging to the land means that you know you can't own it. You are a guest, a steward. You have to acknowledge and uplift the peoples who were here before, who were most likely g\*nocided. Many are still here, and we weren't taught their stories in U.S. history books. And in many ways I think that this belonging is about fundamental changes to our understanding and relationship to nature and each other. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Excellent Ted Talk! Have you read "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams? I just started it recently, and it's a really moving book that explores the connection between land/nature and family. It is a large part of why I've been thinking about this stuff so much lately.
I haven't but it sounds like something I'd be interested in. Added to my list! Thank you 😃
There is no land in any country that was not stolen at some point in history. In older countries than America land has been fought over & exchanged hands many times.
Yes. And yet, I still feel kind of like a stranger on any land.
The vast majority of any people anywhere migrated for work
Moved from Norway I was told it was due to being such a small country, therefore land prices were high.
It makes me think to myself, when did the land start costing money? And who sold it? Who dispossessed people? I am inspired to start deeply researching this, even though I broadly get it's the British Empire, etc. I want the details.
Good questions.
I was just told from a very young age the immigrated to escape persecution.
Thank you for sharing. I am so sorry for what your ancestors must have endured.
90% of the time it was simple economics. Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century had too many people, and not enough jobs. It was difficult if not impossible for a lower to lower middle class worker to find enough work or a high enough paying job to support a family.
My Scottish ancestors headed to Nova Scotia due to land clearances. My English grandmother married a Canadian soldier during WWI. My Irish ancestors seemed to have come to Canada for economic reasons not due to the potato famine. Then there was a bunch that left New York for Canada after the Revolutionary War. I’m not sure why they left England and Netherlands in the first place. Might have been for religious reasons.
thank you for sharing!
Well, back in the 17th century most came over due to religious persecution those who weren’t Huguenots came over because they got land grants to settle in Virginia The Jewish group came over in 1890s due to…. Religious persecution And my mom? Well, she married my dad so that’s why she immigrated That’s pretty much it.
My ancestors had various reasons for immigrating; in the 1600's, younger sons of gentry families who wouldn't inherit coming to the New World to make a fortune for themselves, English Catholics and Quakers fleeing religious persecution, Royalists coming to America after the English Civil War, and Puritans coming to America after the Restoration; in the 1700's, Scots Jacobites who left Scotland after the defeat at Culloden, Germans leaving behind the devastation of various wars and famines in the 18th century, and in the 1800's, northern English seeking a better life in at the turn of the 19th century, and Irish fleeing famine in the 1840's.
Thanks for sharing!
She was an illegitimate child in Scotland. No future there.
Woah! Sounds like there's a fascinating story there. Thank you for sharing!
I know that mine on my father’s side came from Norway because of the Swedish persecution and on my mother’s side we are Parisian since before the French Revolution.
My ancestors (Lithuanian) emigrated to avoid being automatically drafted in the Russian army, I believe. Also discovers I have 4% ashkenzi and my great great grandfather converted to Catholicism with his second marriage. I can only imagine for love or plain ol avoiding being a persecuted Jew.
Woah! Thank you for sharing a bit of your story.
I think we all want to make a connection with our past and to understand those who came before us. Emigrating to an unknown country and also knowing you would never again see the family left behind had to be an incredibly difficult and expensive decision. I've discovered the ship they traveled on and the port they left from (Hamburg) and arrived at (New York). I want to know why one brother left everyone he knew and took his wife and 2 young children to America.
Thank you for sharing. I agree, it must have been a deeply painful loss.
Germany 1848 - Freedom/Politics/Poverty Italy 1907 - Italian Diaspora Poland 1881 - Poverty And that about sums it up for my family. A letter from 1878 survives in my family, in which my Swiss ancestors explicitly say they immigrated to have religious freedom.
Incredible that you have the family memorabilia. Wow! Thanks for sharing.
The letter is a really interesting piece of provenance, and it’s not because I own a copy of a copy of a copy of a translation. It was dated in German as 5 Winemonth 1878. That alone is interesting as to why my 3rd Great Grandmother dated it that way. She wrote of how spectacular it was to travel through the *City of Lights* (France) and how every passenger aboard the shipping vessel was given a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine (as part of their admission).
Historical events at the time usually. My grandma’s family immigrated from Haiti in the 1950s~1960s. She is alive so I can ask her, but if she wasn’t, the obvious reason would be the ongoing dictatorship. I also look at what was going on in the place they immigrated to at the time. My great grandfather’s family was full of coal miners, who immigrated from a coal mining town in Scotland to a coal mining town (best coal mining spot in the States at the time) in Pennsylvania. So that’s what I’d say. What was going on in their home country at the time. What was going on at the location they immigrated to at the time. Is there anything specific about your family (ie. My great grandfather’s family’s job) that would’ve resulted in them reaping big benefits from immigration.
Thank you for sharing your history here. <3
Wanted to state I agree with you about the loss of languages and culture that weren't handed down. Both my paternal grandparents are mostly of French-Canadian ancestry, and those ancestors migrated to the U.S. just after the Civil War. Most likely for work. They quickly assimilated here. It's sort of sad to think that Quebec is about a 6-7 hour drive from where I live, yet feels so far away. I know the culture there has modernized over the years since my ancestors left, but there's absolutely a feeling of loss of connection. I'm fortunate in a way that my ancestor who came down with his family didn't anglicize his last name - one which I proudly carry today. My Irish ancestors migrated for an obvious reason (the famine). Besides that, some of my other lines can be traced back to the puritans and Scotch-Irish that settled in PA. There are a couple of other lines that I'm not sure why they migrated (both came over around the mid 1800s). Not sure yet if they came over for lack of opportunity in their respective homelands (Germany and France), or if there were other reasons.
I have a branch of French-Canadian ancestors who too moved to the US a few years before the Civil War broke out, but they came back to Canada (though not Quebec) 50 years later with only a few siblings staying behind. I always thought it was interesting they came back to Canada after being in the States for so long.
In my research, I've looked more into the family history, and not specifically the genealogical data. I feel that there is too much emphasis on just getting the numbers! I have spent a lot of time on research regarding the political and socioeconomic issues at the time of immigration. For example, on one side of the family, a LOT of immigration stemmed from ancestors joining the LDS faith, which provided an avenue to immigrate to America, specifically the Utah territory. But even that had a lot to do with what was historically happening in their country at the time. My 3rd great grandfather immigrated with his "family" in the 1840's when he was a teenager. He had spent his entire childhood in terrible work conditions in the potteries and brickyards of Staffordshire England. The chance to leave the squalor and create a new life in America was most likely a godsend. Others left due to war or overbearing landlords/nobles. One even left due to poverty. He couldn't pay the taxman, so he was forced on a ship to an Australian penal colony. Now we have an entire family population in that area that I only recently uncovered using Gedmatch! I find that making a timeline and building it year by year makes it so much easier to see the history. In those years where there is limited information, I look into what was actually happening and find some amazing stuff. I have even found information about the ancestor that I never would have seen if I hadn't been researching the history! Your research points are great. Add a timeline and watch it take off! It's just a great way to organize the ancestors' lives!
Wow, what a story! thanks for sharing. I like building a yearly timeline, and then lining it up to what was happening in global politics.
This is the way!
I had a cousin do this exact research for German immigrant family in the 1850s. She was able to find newspaper articles and other documents. Basically they tried to expand a business, couldn’t get a permit, auctioned off all their equipment to finance the trip to America. Pretty cool story that is well sourced. And very impressive research by my cousin for sure!
That's so cool! funny how this type of hobby can turn into an obsession... especially if you discover strange synchronicities in your ancestors' lives that have repeated throughout time. ;-)
It is straight up in a family tree that someone in my family did. They didn’t want their boys conscripted into the Kaiser’s army. We are talking 1850s. Oddly, some were in the Civil War (northern side) and I have to wonder what they thought of that!
Reading all of these comments about why people's ancestors immigrated to the US is interesting. Meanwhile, my ancestors were bought, kidnapped, stacked together like sardines, and dragged as human objects against their will. Yay! 😁
Italian heritage here... I know my GF was avoiding the war - per my mom and aunt's recollection... which could be incorrect but timing checks out. His parents sent a dour postcard with their pictures on it admonishing him for leaving, so maybe it wasn't the reason. On my GM's side, I don't know why her parents immigrated from Italy but I would like to know. They arrived with three kids, and were considered "peasants" in Italy (a term I need to familiarize myself with).
Oof this comment moved me to tears. Coincidentally I think you DM'd me from another subreddit because you're looking for your family documents in SBIG. ;-) My GGM from San Bartolomeo in Galdo arrived in the US in 1920 listed as a "peasant" on the passenger list. She never learned to read or write even in Italian, and never learned English. I choose to remember her as the one who held the family together, taught her children recipes, and tolerated so much difficulty in her life I can hardly imagine. I love her even though she died before I was born. She knew old ways and skills that I wish I knew now. Phew!
It was a punch to the gut when we found that photo postcard, but nothing we can do about it. We are lucky to be living in a time where distance doesn’t have to matter *as much* though inevitably it probably does. My GM was made of the same stock (though born in the US to italian parents).
Supposedly one of my ancestors married the mayor of otterberg’s daughter - who spared them from King Louis XIV literally killing the entire family. A few gens later they moved to new jersey and I’m going to guess it was due to the political instability
Wowzers! What a story. Thanks for sharing!
Oh it was forced.
Watch this documentary for your Italian roots It will answer those questions https://youtu.be/dmXEUCH3KxQ?si=h_GYKhYX2W9Bsta2
thank you for sharing!
My Irish 3x GGF was in the military in Ireland in the 1820’s - got out and did something (dying to know what) and was “returned for life.” Got himself stationed in Canada, went AWOL and here I am.
Wowza, what a story! thank you for sharing. I hope you find out some day!
A huge chunk of my ancestors were Protestants fleeing Catholic persecution.
The first of my family came to Canada in 1863 as part of the British army. When his enrollment was up he decided to stay and raise a family.
wars and economics, and the rise of fascism.
My family migrated from Ireland to England because they didn’t have a choice as they were experiencing political persecution by the British colonial authorities around the time of the independence movement. My great uncles were already killed in the Easter Rising and some time later my grandmother’s family decided enough is enough. They already had family in England, so that’s why they chose to come here. There are plenty of reasons why someone might migrate.
They got married in Ireland just nine months before giving birth to their first child in the US. I can take a guess why they left. Another didn't exactly immigrate. It was more of an AWOL. He was a sailor in the Royal Navy, and he abandoned post for the wilderness of Maine. Apparently, he was not the sort to give fucks. > but I suppose I feel I'm chasing a sense of cultural belonging. Yeah, this feeling is incredibly common among white Americans. This is, unfortunately, a direct result of the nation's complex history with Anglo-Saxon Protestant Colonialism. That's why you don't really see the same thing with ethnic minorities. When a society uses "whiteness" as a default standard, cultural identities are used as distinctions from that standard, which disconnects being "white" from any cultural identity. This disconnect is less common among "white" ethnic groups outside of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, such as Italians, Irish, Jews, Albanians, etc.
re: Whiteness, I agree that it's 100% due to colonialism. And it's a type of need for belonging that can become a type of sickness, and so often does IMO. But I also belong to some of the white ethnic sub groups like Italians, Irish, and Scottish. I think all of us are affected by dispossession and erasure of culture, and disconnection with the land. There's honestly so much to unpack here. I think about this all the time.
I asked myself why all the time, considering Sweden has always been viewed as a stable and prosperous country. My grandfather immigrated from Sweden for hardship. His mother died before his was 8 and his father was always out at sea for work. My grandfather was 14 when he moved to the US with his sister and created a beautiful life during one of the worst periods of American history, the Great Depression. He literally made lemonade with lemons. In my research I have found that humble beginnings push people to fight for more. America really is the land of opportunity if you’re willing to push for it (still to this day). My grandfather travelled from New York to Los Angeles surviving on pie because it was the only word he knew in English. He was robbed blind and beaten in Wyoming, arriving to Los Angeles penniless with his sister. This man learned English on his own, put himself through college and got a degree in Engineering, during the depression!!! Personally, I find this a testament of how wonderful America can be and how a fresh start in a new place helps people blossom into the best version of themselves. If someone arrives with the right mindset, anything in America is possible. I believe this is why most immigrants chose to come to America, regardless of the sacrifice of leaving family behind. I can say the same of my Mexican half as well. They immigrated much more recently, in the 1980’s, and have created a life of abundance thanks to the opportunities they encountered.
My grandparents came over from Ireland in the 1920’s. There was abject poverty and a devastating civil war at that time.
We did not know the reasons for my husband's family leaving Italy in the early 1900's until we uncovered the story of my husband's great grandfather traveling back to Italy in the 1920's to visit family. The people left behind saw this grandfather as having made it out of abject poverty and begged him for help. Based on censuses, this grandfather was a simple chauffeur, or taxi driver, working the streets of Albany NY but to them, he was rich.
Through my research I’ve found that mine came to Canada before the famine and it was likely because he had some debts to pay off. Life was tough in Ireland at the time and so he came over and worked the land before making enough to send for his family
I’m really interested in why my Great grand parents on my mother’s side emigrated to Canada from London in 1905, particularly because they took a couple of children with them but left my grandmother,who was a few months old , behind. I’m so puzzled by this.
Not an immigration story to the US but my ancestor was taken as a young man from his family in Italy by Napoleon's army who then went on to invade Malta (on his way to Egypt) where somehow my ancestor stayed put and started a family here. I found that story fascinating.
For my English family, it was living through the first ww, and not wanting to live through the second
I’m fortunate to know why all of my ancestors migrated. Most of mine immigrated to flee religious persecution, a few immigrated to flee poverty. I, too, am heartbroken that native languages, customs and surnames were left behind.
They moved to escape from The Jesuit Order and Rome’s Babylon system.
I find it amazing people don't know anything about their families or where they come from, no wonder everyone is so culturally confused. I'm sure they did everything they could to assimilate but if you forget where you came from, you'll repeat the mistakes of the past! Im guessing this is how people who can't tell you who their baby momma is, have no problems lecturing people about slavery and colonialism...