My first three books recounted the European immigrant experience. These photographs taken by an Ellis Island clerk show the incredible diversity of people who braved the journey and the soul of the country that received them. You will be stopped…
Blog Archives
The boarding house reach
Both my first novel, When We Were Strangers, and my current one (coming in September, 2013), put the main character for some time in boarding houses in the years between 1880 and 1911. So I did some research and find…
80% of American colonists
You remember the history lesson/s: how “our forefathers came to the New World searching for religious and political freedom” and so forth? Ain’t necessarily so, or if so, those lofty yearnings were tangential. In fact 80% of all white (mostly…
The Ellis Island name myth
“They changed my family’s name at Ellis Island.” You hear that often. It’s a myth, an urban-immigrant legend. The Ellis Island clerks operated from passenger lists created by the ship captains or their agents at the port of origin who…
Wanted: 50 hr. work week
In June, 1911, the Cleveland garment workers, mostly immigrant women, struck for a series of demands the owners considered outrageous: a 50 hour work week; a “short Saturday” (7:30am to 1:30pm); Sundays off; not being charged for use of the…
The anti-Statue of Liberty
In the midst of virulent anti-immigration legislation rampant in so many states now, I came upon this cartoon from the time of President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Miss Liberty is complaining: “Mr. Wilson, if you are going to make this island…
Greek to me
We’re in Ancona, on the Adriatic in these days, staying with Maurizio’s family. On Thursday we’re going to Greece to visit our friends Yiannis and Jo Ann Pantanizopoulos who have a house by the sea. Their handsome, kind and very…
Coming from Turrivalignani
Sometimes readers tell me of their ancestors who came to America in Irma’s time but for any number of possible reasons could not or would not share this experience with their families. In those cases, if reading Irma’s story helps…
Foreign-born in 1860
Not a lot of prose in this post. I’ll just share some stunning numbers. Such as, 400,000 immigrants served in the Union Army. The foreign-born population doubled between 1850 and 1860, with most of the newcomers from outside the British…
Our document wars
Immigration is difficult. Some cross deserts. Even those with the means and good fortune to attempt legal immigration, to get “in line” must affront seemingly trackless legal thickets. When I was a resident (but not citizen) of Italy, married to…
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