Posted on 08/29/2003 9:54:04 AM PDT by Lurking Libertarian
According to the Ellis Island website, today is exactly 100 years to the day that my maternal grandfather landed in America. 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.
Please join me in giving thanks for this great land, and in praying that it remains a beacon of freedom and opportunity.
God Bless America!
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.
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!
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)
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