100 Years in America (Vanity)

Congratulations, LL! Are you planning a big party for the clan?

Let's see... it's been 105 years since my great-grandfather & grandfather (all of 3 years old) came here from Lithuania. The rest of his family became Pennsylvania coal miners, but he hopped a boat up the Great Lakes & found work at Ford Motor in Detroit.

The ship's manifest described him as an "Austrian Hebrew furrier" (he was from Poland, which was then part of the Austrian Empire), and he had a princely $80 in his pocket.

And from Yoni:

my great grandfather came through Ellis Island from Poland.

Thanks for the ping, LL! I have spent many hours at the Ellis Island site, searching for clues. The manifests are fascinating in and of themselves... how much (or rather little) money they came with, where the final destinations were, and how short they were. A lot of people had "gray" eyes, too. :-)

I never did (or haven't yet) located my maternal grandmother's ship... she had two first names that I know of, but she must have been listed under another one, sigh. She met my grandfather in Chicago and they were married in 1911. They were both from Poland, from the Austro/Hung. region then known as Galicia.

I have my grandfather's info around here somewhere. IIRC he arrived in 1909. I must go back and look it up.

My grandmother was from Majdan. From what I can gather, this town was 80% Jewish until the Jews were herded together and shot in a forest. It was the first village made Judenrein. When my mother and I visited in the 70's, her uncle who remained there was still shaken up. Sobering.

My grandfather was from Blazowa (near Rzeszow).

Mazal Tov on a century of freedom and success in America!

Hooray for your Grampa! (What's Granma's story?)

Myself, my mother's family (English, Huguenot) was here before the Revolution, and my father was a Gaelic-speaking Irishman who came here after Eire won its independence.

Hence, my nom de FReep (The census and its ethnic groupings was on my mind when I signed up, and I trace my own conservatism to the Old Dominion rather than the Ould Sod)

Congratulations! Another 10 years for us before we can celebrate the big 100.

Took me a while to find my maternal grandfather's name on the manifest--they mangled it so much.

He was Croatian, and worked in Germany for a time. Just before he left, he got down and kissed the ground, crying. He knew how that beautiful countryside was going to be scarred in the inevitable war. We all miss him terribly. I wish he was still around--I was too young to appreciate him when he died 30 years ago. We get all our rich history stories from my mom now.

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