When did your family immigrate to the United States"

Parent Cafe
41

My family is almost completely made up of first generation immigrants to the US.

On my father’s side, my great uncle came from Pakistan in the 1990s and worked for Mobil in rural Louisiana. His wife, my great aunt, was very lonely because there was no Muslim or desi population there, so he requested a transfer to New Orleans. The rest of my father’s family continued to immigrate to New Orleans and my dad came over in 1997. He actually missed both my birth and my sisters.

On my mother’s side, her father came over to America in the 1970s and worked for NASA. He didn’t enjoy the job or the US so he went back to Pakistan a few years later. Later, he got married and had kids and told them all to move to America instead of staying in Pakistan. My mom was the first to do so. She brought my sister and I to America in December of 2001. She was pregnant with my little brother, dealing with two unruly toddlers, and very obviously Muslim in New York only a few months after 9/11. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant trip for her, but that is another story. Anyway, she settled in New Orleans with my dad and our family. She speaks English fluently but still forces me to talk to strangers for her just because she thinks it’ll build my spirit or something.

42

My dad was born in Denmark and came to the US with my grandparents in 1926 when he was 3. They settled in Racine, WI which had a large Danish population.

My maternal grandmother came to the US from Denmark in 1890 at the age of 10 with her parents. My maternal grandfather came to the US from Denmark in 1898 at the age of 21. He had a half-brother who was already here. They also all settled in Racine. All Danish Lutherans of course.

43

I love how we have all these disparate stories and yet we are all Americans. Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower or whether we arrived in the last 20 years.

Donna, when at a computer I will PM you with specific names from Lomza and Jedwabne.

44

Yes, and we don’t view it as a ‘micro-aggression’ to ask. ;:wink:

45

The fun side of my lineage came from Schleswig-Holstein in the late 1800’s. One side was German and were German speaking even in the US, the other was proud Dane and spoke Danish. They two branches met up here in the Midwest and three generations later I was born. I’ve often wondered if the earlier Schleswig-Holsteiners met on different sides of the battlefield trying to settle the Schleswig-Holstein Question.

I took a trip to the area this spring to see the land of the forebearers. I was frequently mistaken for a German native - many surprised faces when I responded in English to their German greetings and questions. I guess the gene pool wasn’t too diluted with the other side of my heritage. (Scottish and Irish going way back.)

46

annoyingdad: my aunt lives in Racine–we always have Danish kringle there. (We’re Polish Catholics, but we still like the kringle :wink: )

My parents are both US born children of Polish immigrants who came over around 1910. My mother’s family was from Augustow in NE Poland, (close to where Donna’s and PG’s ancestors are from) and father’s family from Plock in north central Poland (which was all part of Russia at that time.) Dad’s father was about 18 when he came through Ellis Island–we found the records/date/ship, etc. He settled in the Pittsburgh, PA area and first worked in coal mines (hated it) then in steel mills. During prohibition I’m pretty sure he was involved in bootlegging/transporting alcohol-- he enjoyed a little prosperity around that time. He later settled in Cleveland and worked in aluminum mills there. He never learned to read English and always spoke Polish at home. His family were peasant farmers in Poland, and he was one of 12 kids. He was afraid he’d be “drafted” into the Russian army–that’s why he came to the US. My dad visited his one surviving aunt still living on the old farm in Poland–in very primitive conditions in the 1990s–no indoor plumbing, cooking in open firepit in the house. He cried when he saw it–looked like it hadn’t changed since the middle ages.

My mom’s mother came as a young child with her mother–around the same year, also through Ellis Island. Her dad had already been working in St. Louis (meat processing, maybe?) for years to save money to bring them over. They were from peasant families and had nothing to lose by coming over. Grandma always told the story that they didn’t have any money for food after getting train tickets to St. Louis. She remembers a kind soldier sharing his lunch with her on the long train ride. After only a few months in St. Louis, grandma’s dad disappeared. Her mom was worried sick. After a week or so they got a letter telling them to come to Milwaukee–apparently there was a mixup of work boots at the factory. He was accused of stealing someone’s boots and the other worker threatened to kill him–so they all moved to Milwaukee where he found another factory job. Only two of their 6 children survived to have children of their own. They had a difficult/tragic life, but made it possible for the following generations to prosper in the US.

Most of my relatives still live around the Great Lakes area. Very tight knit families.

47

“We went to Ellis Island a few years ago and found my great grandfather’s entrance records. His name was anglicized (Guldbaek to Goldbeck).”

That must have happened in the old country (did he depart from Southampton, England?) because despite the myth that does not die, names were NOT changed at Ellis Island - they were checked off a manifest prepared at ship departure and there were plenty of foreign language interpreters around. The idea that the xenophobic Ellis Islsnd guy said “your name is no longer Zbvcsxvbn, it’s Zane” and the immigrant nodded and accepted it is simply a myth. Ellis Island didn’t GIVE anyone any official papers with new names.

48

1980s and 1990s :slight_smile:

49

I’m the first generation of my family to be born in the United States. My parents were both Croatian immigrants. My father was from an island along the Adriatic coast and my mother was from Sibenik. My father’s family had lived on the same island since the 1600s.

My mother came here through Ellis Island when she was 5–she came with her brother who was 14 and her sister who was 12. Their father had come to the US earlier. He went to live with a cousin who was working in the coal mines in West Virginia. He got a job for my grandfather, who worked and saved money so his family could come over.

While my grandfather was in the US, his wife, my grandmother, died. My grandmother’s sister took care of my mother and her siblings, until my father could bring them to the US. My mother never really knew what caused her mother’s death. Shortly before my mother and her siblings arrived in the US, their father was killed in a mining accident. When they arrived in the US, my grandfather’s cousin went to NY and met them and took them to live with him. He left West Virginia and moved to Detroit (which had a Croatian enclave) and took my mother and her siblings with him along with his two children. My mother lived there until she met my father. They met at a dance that was held at a Croatian social club. My father had immigrated to the US from Croatia several years before with his brother.

My mother had lots of secrets–so I’m not sure how much of what I know about her family is accurate One of the secrets that my mother never wanted us to know was that she been married before she married my father. I found this out as I was sorting through her things after she had passed away. When I asked my Dad, he said that my mother never wanted us to know about her previous marriage and that he didn’t want to discuss it because it would have upset her. I didn’t continue the conversation. After my Dad passed away, I started doing research and found out that my mother’s first husband had died in World War II.

50

Dad’s great grandfather was ejected from Ireland in 1845 for marrying an English woman. Her family paid passage, Ireland-> Halifax->Boston. It was cheaper to immigrate from Canada. A lot of the famine Irish came in the holds of logging ships and landed at Saint John or Quebec, I’ve read. Anyway, he and his oldest two sons later marched to Atlanta with Sherman. He supposedly was a carpenter and later sang songs he learned from freed slaves who helped build the corduroy roads through the Carolinas. His oldest, my grandfather’s uncle, would buy candy for nieces and nephews with his Civil War pension in the 1900’s and 1910’s.
The other paternal half is mostly Swiss/German Mennonite/Amish from around 1710 to 1841, one born en route. My grandmother spoke some German, my ggfather spoke quite a bit, apparently. The Mennonites/Amish started in PA; the Germans in the Shenandoah Valley. One of these escorted Cornwallis’s troops from Yorktown to prison quarters at Harper’s Ferry. Again, don’t absolutely know that’s true, but he did move west when he got a land grant some years later.

The maternal side mostly arrived in two spurts in the early 1620’s and then in the 1630’s, with a couple late arrivals showing up after Charles II was crowned, and again around 1750.

One of the early arrivals was the first Englishman hanged for a capital crime in the New World. That’s a tough one. Yes, that boat. Yes, a noose. Nobody talks about it.

Two fought in the Pequot war (1630’s), 5 were killed in King Philip’s War (1676), and 5 more killed in the unpleasantness between 1775-1781, three at the massacre of Ft Griswold and one in a prison ship. I don’t recall the fifth, but I’m thinking it was on Long Island or Manhattan early in the war.

One was part of the picket line that received Major Andre from the “cow boys.”
Between the two families, someone was allegedly present at most events from Concord through Yorktown, including a grandmother who claimed to have been at Bunker Hill. A recorded history claims she tore her petticoats up for bandages and was able to escape when the British overran the place. One of her (or her husband’s?) ancestors fell overboard en route and was able to haul himself back on board.

One was hanged at Salem, her widower later claiming only lodging expenses from Massachusetts. Don’t know that I believe it, but he was supposedly seven feet tall, lived to 109, and may have been Charles I executioner. Like I said, probably not true, but a good story sometimes isn’t.

I get to work with a lot of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants. It’s awesome. Nobody’s story is particularly easy, and crossing oceans for the reasons they do/did impresses the heck out of me.

51

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Me and my family moved to the US when I was 4-5. I’m 18 now, and I’m fluent in English, but my mother is far from fluency for some reason.


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I have no evidence for this…JMHO…but I’ve noticed that when kids come here before puberty, they seem to learn English w/o an accent. And, when adults move here, that either they have trouble learning English or they sometimes learn it with a heavy accent.

My SIL came here from China right before she started kindergarten (about 45 years ago). Of course she knew no English at all. Her mom says that by Christmas, SIL was fluent. She has no accent whatsoever and neither does her brother. Her dad has a slight accent, but he worked here most of that time. Her mom still has a heavy accent.

52

Before 10 is the age, I think. After that it gets more difficult.

53

@DonnaL and @Pizzagirl, I was in Tykocin two years ago – it’s an amazing place. There are these traces of Jewish life all around the area; very surreal. It was Tykocin, I believe, that lost vast majority of its inhabitants virtually overnight (rounded up and executed at nearby Treblinka). As for Jedwabne… wow… the very word sends chills down my spine.

54

Here’s my evidece–n size=2:

My son-in-law moved to the US from St. Petersburg, Russia, when he was 6–he has an accent. It’s certainly not as noticeable as that of his parents, but he definitely has it. My mother came to the US at age 5 from Croatia and she had an accent that was much more noticeable than my son-in-law’s.

55

My Paternal grandfather was a horse trainer who came here from Scotland in the early 1900’s and changed his last name, supposedly to escape the draft. He married my grandmother whose parents emigrated from Switzerland and Ukraine and married after they met here. Moms family on both sides came from England in the early 18th century.

Husbands maternal grandparents moved here from Mexico in the 1920’s. They had 9 children including my MIL. DH’s grandmothers family had come from Spain to Mexico several generations earlier and had not intermarried with any Mexicans until she did- I think her family was ashamed of her . We don’t know much about DH’s Dad’s side except that his Dad was one of 14 and was born in a tent near an Arizona river while the family migrated from Oklahoma to California in 1925. The whole family picked fruit when they could find work.

56

My mom came to the northwest with her family, during WWII from the midwest.
Before they were in Missouri & Kentucky, they were in New England, first Conn, I think, maybe 1620?
Before thatthey were in England & the Netherlands, and included French Huguenots, who were persecuted and forced to flee to England.
Dads family is English, Swedish, & German. My fathers family is probably the most recent arrival, his fathers family arrived in 1850 from Prussia, and his mothers from Sweden in 1867. But most were here by then.

Hs family has been here for two or three generations, from Sweden, Norway & Italy.

57

On my mom’s side, started coming over in 1630. My ancestors were part of the group that founded Stratford, Connecticut.

On my dad’s side, Jews from Germany and/or middle Europe (Poland/Hungary/Austria), turn of century (circa 1900, that is.)

58

Father’s parents were born in Milwaukee but some of their older sibs were not- families came from around Poznen (?-sp?- western Poland) around 1899. His mother’s family changed their name to sound more Polish- a generation or two later some of my father’s cousins on his father’s side shortened and Americanized the name to a common English one. My father related how he was yelled at as a kid in both Polish and German in his neighborhood- he learned his prayers in Polish. His father only had an 8th grade education, always rented and walked to his factory job. His son got a college education courtesy of the end of WWII Navy. I read up on Poland when son spent some time there for work (not in family’s area) and learned that Hitler and the Russians took away what was once a thriving multinational country preWWII. I grew up with dumb Pollack jokes and avoided that obvious part of my heritage (distinctive last name in a more Scandinavian part of S WI).

Mother’s father came from Iceland as a young man- his mother was from a little Norwegian village north of the arctic circle, his father was Swedish. One ancestor was an antibooze minister in Scandinavia- my mom said her father served a “double” (ie twice the single shot of liquor) to the priest at their wedding. Ancestors rolling in theirs graves no doubt- liquor and marrying a Catholic! My mother said her grandmother (“Besta” she was called - means grandmother I was told) said she became a Swedish subject when she married. I met her once when she visited us from California- her hair was very long, braided and wound around her head.

Mother’s mother was of English/Welsh stock. My mother was raised Episcopalian and converted to Catholicism- an easy switch. One ancestor was a nurse for one of the Mayo brothers- and buried in their family plot. I tried to find the grave once when in Rochester, MN but it may have been submerged by then- it is in the records. Grandmother (I think) had to work when he H was killed working on the railroad. My sister found some old papers in our family basement awhile back that gave interesting details. Only my father’s father lived beyond my very early years- no chances to ask them about family/origins/the old days. And I was too young to quiz my GGM that time.

My H came from Gujarat, India as a young physician (like the majority of his classmates- the brain drain was real- by his time the Indian government was clamping down and they no longer offered the testing required to get US residencies in India). His accent seemed British for so many years, but after 30 years of marriage it has been Americanized and I am so familiar with his speech I don’t notice it anymore. His sister also came in her 20’s but was educated at a different (girl’s) school and had a more classic Indian accent- she lost it a long time ago. Their aunt went to California at age 40- she still has a horrible Indian accent 30 some years later- she has a master’s in English Lit from India (obviously the written, not spoken studies). Her H came as a young man and had excellent English the years I knew him ( he died recently). I have gotten used to many Indian accents of H’s family and friends- you learn to listen to understand. Some younger relatives of H were children when their family was kicked out of Uganda during the Idi Amin regime- one born in London where the once prosperous family lived many people to a flat. They then came to the US. 48 hours (I think) to leave, like many Indians. Could not bring anything except basically the clothes they wore- no jewelry, money, etc.

Both my sister and I have noted how we, our ancestors and our kids have all moved from places of our births and childhoods. Some people stay put- like my brother and his kids- while there are those of us who don’t.

59

"One of the secrets that my mother never wanted us to know was that she been married before she married my father. "

That’s what happened when I found my half sister and half brother as a young adult. They were from my bio father’s second marriage (he died when they were 2 and 4 - I was 9, but no one ever contacted my mother and me to let us know so I was 27 when we found out he had died). Anyway, long story short, the second wife had never told them that their deceased father had been married previously and had had a child. It was a completely legit marriage - it wasn’t as thought I was out of wedlock or something that would have been “shameful.” To this day my half sister hasn’t really forgiven her mother for hiding this. And there were pictures of me in their photo albums that were never explained to them! Crazy.

60

My maternal grandmother was older than my maternal grandfather - only by 8 months or so. When I went back and traces her maternal branch back, I discovered that with the exception only of her mother, all of the women in her maternal line were older than their husbands! (Or partners as some of them appeared too poor to have been able to have gotten married) This was a small town in NW Bavaria.