When Our Grandparents Came to America...

 It was a perfect day for a walk. The freshly cut grass in the Sculpture Garden was a delight to breathe in and trees were in bloom. All was well until we saw a woman walking carrying a baby on her back while she carried a bunch of flowers that she was trying to sell. Her back was stooped from the weight of the baby, but she kept on.

The words echoed in my brain. “When our grandparents came to America, they started working right away.” I’d heard people say that too many times.

Ready for an argument, I almost wished that someone was there who would dare to say that to me. Maybe their grandparents discussed their immigration stories, but most didn’t, preferring to move forward and make a better life. Many had memories that they preferred to leave to the past.

My maternal grandmother had a different reaction. In 1905, at about 10 years old, she came to America from Russia with her parents and three brothers. Prior to 1924, the United States had no immigration quotas for people coming from Europe. Anyone arriving at Ellis Island without contagious illnesses was allowed to stay and without having to wait years for work permits. Most people started to work immediately.

Unlike most people, my grandmother talked about her story repeatedly. I heard most of her stories too many times to count. Therefore, I know that my grandmother and her family moved in with her Aunt Dina who had 11 children. There were thus 19 people in the same house which most likely had only one bathroom. They lived with them for over a year while my great-grandfather worked for his brother-in-law. When he was able to, he started his own business. Eventually, they moved to their own place.

Yes, it was different when our grandparents came. Besides being able to work right away, there were more SRO’s that people could afford. Some people moved in with family that had arrived before they had without worrying about zoning laws that prohibited extended families living together. It was hard for them, but it was doable.

Unless you’re one of the 9.1 million Native Americans in this country, you or someone in your family has an immigration story. This is my family’s story. What’s yours?

 

 

 

Searching for My Roots - A Long Unfinished Journey

 

I’ve often watched “Finding Your Roots” on TV in amazement and some disbelief as Henry Louis 

Gates told the current celebrity that his 20^th great-grandfather fought in the crusades, invented the 

wheel, or fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill. How could he do that and why didn’t he look for my 

family? I could have used the help.

My family search began in 2013. While I knew many of my mother’s family members, the only paternal relatives who I knew were my grandparents and my uncle. The names of other relatives were never even mentioned to me. When I was 10 years old, I asked my father why he had no cousins. He told me that my grandparents had engaged in so many feuds with their siblings he had never gotten to know his cousins and had no adult relationships with them as a result. I never doubted this answer and thus hadn’t thought about it for years.

In 2013, that changed when my husband and I planned a trip to Eastern Europe including four days in Budapest where my grandmother’s parents were from. Did I have any distant relatives there, I wondered. I began the search on Ancestry.com and Family Search. My grandmother Jeanette Klein always lived in New York City. Later, I would find out how common the name Klein was. In the meantime, I accessed Census records, boat manifests, marriage certificates, and some birth records. By the time we got to Hungary, I knew my great-grandparents’ names and knew that my great-grandfather was born in Kisvarda. Nonetheless, this did not enable me to find much else. If I have any relatives in Hungary, I will never know.

The search to find relatives in Hungary, triggered my curiosity about those cousins in America whose names I’d never heard. My father had at least 20 first cousins, but he only knew about three of them. At least some of them must have had children. What were their names? What did they look like?

            Over the years, people would occasionally meet me for the first time and tell me that I looked like someone they knew. I began to wonder if the person they referred to was one of my unknown relatives. I started asking them where this person was from and what her background was in the hopes that I'd find a long-unknown relative.

            My sister and I got our DNA tested by different sites hoping to find more missing relatives. In the years since, we’ve met several people from our mother’s side of the family. We still haven’t encountered anyone in our father’s family. Maybe if we wait long enough, Henry Louis Gates will help us out.