LIFE AFTER LIFE - DEATH AND BACK : FILM REVIEW

This film, which contains four testimonials by individuals who had near death experiences,

was possibly the most tremendous film on the subject that I've ever seen. It has beautiful images but the sincerity and the details of the experiences as spoken impressed me most of all. One person was an atheist. Another person was agnostic and telling her story to an atheist doctor ended up with her being put into a psych ward and doped up. What a shame! (Are most doctors atheist?) Fortunately, she got her life back and came away with new beliefs. These people had transformative experiences. 

I put the word Jesus in my tags. The film's not preachy. These are English speaking Westerners who live in a culture informed by Christianity.

I hope the film- maker, Craig McMahon, makes more film on the subject.

Every day people are born and people die. The sickness and death of the Covid Pandemic has effected our consciousness. Maybe we shouldn't be so afraid. Have an open mind and watch this one!

C 2021

CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION : UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -2021

I photographed the front page of the current Application for Naturalization which comes from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I picked up a citizenship packet from my local public library, which pre-Covid also had tutoring available for the civics part and it's included.

I suggest you look at an application and read the questions. Many are concerned with an applicants legal behavior. Of course, entering the country legally is important. Overall, the United States government seems more concerned with serious crimes such as being associated with terrorists or radical groups. Don't know if this picture is at all readable. It starts off with "If your biological or adoptive mother or father is a U.S. citizen by birth, or was naturalized before your 18th birthday, you may already be a U.S. citizen."

In my years of living in Southern California, I've had strangers - and I do mean strangers - suggest I marry them to keep them in the country. I've always thought this was outrageous. Maybe I'll write more about that for my book. Let's just say that if you aren't wearing a wedding band and walk down the street, you can be targeted. Just how crazy or desperate is someone that they would do that? 

American Citizenship is, in my opinion, prime reason women are willing to be imported as brides.

I guess I'm of the traditional mindset. Marry for love.

C 2021

 

WERE THEY AS POOR AS YOU THINK? #10

I love the genealogy series Finding Your Roots. I recently binge watched it. But while it's just stating facts when someone, even Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says it, I tend to question how poor someone was when I hear that a laborer came over with only $6. because that's what's recorded on a ship manifest/ passenger list. We start to think $6 will buy us a burger and fries instead of the value back in the day.

That's the amount declared. Noone was going through his socks or shoes or money belt or that secret compartment in his one suitcase. Or in her undies or babies' diaper. I'm sure lots of things were kept safe by being sewn in to clothing.

I know how we think of steerage passengers. Early films and photos don't tend to depict thin gentleman in suits strolling along with their luggage being transported by a worker. They show fat women with scarved heads, their worldly possessions all bundled up in sheets. The motion of the film suggests they move awkwardly (you would too carrying a heirloom carpet on your back) and as quickly as possible (Gotta get that train to Pittsburgh.) It doesn't help that the words on the Statue of Liberty suggest she's a beacon for the bedraggled. But am I to believe the ignorant were stupid? How it is then that so many of the descendants of these passengers have made their way through college, into professions, and some have earned PhDs? Three or more generations in America makes a difference but so does inherited genius.

No doubt third class tickets/ steerage and poverty tended to go hand in hand. But sometimes it's just that a person was cheap or wanted to spend less on a ticket and have more in the pocket.

It's also true that the tickets were often purchased by family already in America and striding those fabled streets of gold while breaking their backs in mines and factories. Men first, wives later.

There is only one thing to do in order to better wrap your mind around just how much money a person brought with them on the ship that they declared. Use an online inflation calculator that turns that $6 in 1901 into 2021 U.S. Dollars. (The U.S. Department of Labor has one.)

Ok, it's not perfect in predicting value because prices fluctuate but it's the best.

Ever wonder who figured out what the dollar value was when the immigrant had left with Italian, German, or Austrian money? When and where would he convert that into American dollars? 

According to one such online calculator $6 in 1901 is about $184 dollars today.

Let's do another example. $25 in 1914 is $650 today.

Another. $65 in 1921. $945 today.

You get the idea. 

The inflation calculator is so useful.

Using census information you can calculate rent, mortgage, home value, and get a better idea about your ancestors money. If your Ellis Island ancestor goes to a house that he owns or pays a high rent on, what does that tell you?

I'm going to go on a little about the cost of tickets here too.

You may want to look over a short paper online that was presented in 2012 at a gathering of the Economic History Association in Vancouver by Brandon DuPont, Drew Keeling, and Thomas Weiss. Its called Passenger Fairs For Overseas Travel In The 19th and 20th Centuries.

The report mentions that advertisements for fares didn't give particulars - the company might actually quote higher or lower. Fares varied by direction - West higher, luxury of design and location of cabin space (ocean view or inside with none) speed of the ship, and other factors. Some ships converted cabins into third class to profit by quantity. A head tax on incoming passengers generally made west travel on the Atlantic a bit more expensive than east. (Where are the outgoing passenger lists for New York?)

There were four major carriers, CUNARD line generally most expensive. Cunard's star attractions and most expensive travel being the three sister ships - the Lusitania (which got torpedoed and sunk), Mauritania (called The Grand Old Lady), and the Aquitania. 

Holland-America, and North German Lloyd line were two others in The Big Four.

I learned about another line I hadn't known about called Anchor. It was the least expensive. You might think of it as a steamship equivalent of Jet Blue. 

The authors of this paper do a lot of statistics but overall they play with the discrepancy between advertised prices and profits. 

So let's use that inflation calculator on some suggested fares from that report and see just how expensive ocean travel was in 1908.

$151 on The Grand Old Lady going east is $4275. Highest fare. (We can assume people of wealth paid that ticket price.)

Cheapest first class on that ship was $121. $3425 today.

Cheapest ticket on that ship was $54. Now $1528. (I assume steerage.)

Holland America average fare using all ticket classes $141. $3992.

Holland America cheapest ticket west was $41. $1160. 

North German Lloyd cheapest ticket was $70 west. $1981. (If your ancestors left a German port there's a good chance they took this line.)

Anchor cheapest ticket was $62 west. $1755.

I think it's fair to say that a typical Passenger in steerage,  scarf, carpet, and all began their trip to America with a personal net worth of more than many an American today who gets government EBT / Food assistance. They were better off than our homeless.

(I look forward to learning if the companies charged less for children and babies.)

C 2021 

This post is part of a series that focuses on Ellis Island immigrants.

MAYBE THEY DIDN'T COME THROUGH NEW YORK #9

Previously I've mentioned that New York City was a popular destination for immigrants because they could hop on a train and get almost anywhere in the nation by train. I feel sure that, though there was great demand for tickets, there must have been competition as well, reflected in fares.

I know that winter seas were generally rough and the fear of icebergs and sinking existed before the Titanic disaster. A rough Atlantic Ocean could make that steerage compartment a terrible ride and raise the risk of illness also because of close quarters, crowding, and shared air. (You wouldn't want to be in steerage with a virus.) A ship could carry over 1000 passengers in steerage. (The largest ships could carry near 3000 passengers - 800 or so being crew.)

Other ships besides the Titanic did sink. It was the Titanic that was marketed as unsinkable and we've never gotten over the irony. 

Winter tickets were less expensive than summer. In 1900 an average steerage ticket is said to have been about $30. That is over $900 today. 

Try to research the price of a ticket by ship, ship line, voyage, and season.

New York Harbor and Castle Garden, which has its own online database, or Ellis Island were not the only destinations for ships full of immigrant passengers.

Consider:

Canadian ports including Great Lakes ports. (Immigrants sometimes walked into the United States from Canada. They may or may not be listed in Border Crossings.)

Baltimore: A bustling port. Popular for immigrants who wanted to avoid New York. Railroad service also very good. If they settled on the east coast, this might be the port they used.

Boston : a favorite of the Irish. Why arrive in New York or Phili instead?

New Orleans : A popular port for the Gulf of Mexico and Southern states.

Philadelphia: Popular among those heading for life in Pennsylvania and New Jersey but also the Southern states. Some competition with New York.

San Francisco: Ships brought Chinese and other Asian immigrants including Hawaiins to America along with European passengers and some coming from Central and South America. (Including Picture Brides.)

Also consider:

San Diego : note also Border Crossings (on foot) from Mexico.

Los Angeles (San Pedro -Long Beach)

Alaska (multiple ports)

Mobile, Alabama

As steam ships got bigger, they needed deeper water ports. Smaller ships continued to run. 1870 is about the time steamships took over from sail ships re immigrants. 

Many on-line indexes exist for ports including at FamilySearch.

C 2021

RAILROAD TIES: ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 

A short and sweet film, Railroad Ties is the perfect film to watch in celebration of Black History Month. Six people who did not know each other were found by Ancestry, the genealogy database company, to come to Brooklyn, New York to learn about the abolitionist preacher, the firey Henry Ward Beecher, at the Plymouth Church. They learn why slaves on the Underground Railroad avoided New York City. Slavery might have been illegal in the north but runaway slaves were still considered property and there were fewer slave catchers in Brooklyn. The Fugitive Slave Act meant they weren't safe till they got to Canada.

Another place on tour is the home of abolitionist Lewis S. Tappen. 

And so the reveal is that the six are connected by history and in five cases by genetics. One descends from Tappen. The others are cousins related to a woman slave he helped escape slavery.

It was touching. My only problem with the film is that we are not told how Ancestry found these people. Was it the traditional paper trail or DNA testing or both?

For those readers unfamiliar with The Underground Railroad, terminology like conductor and passenger and station were used but there wasn't a physical train. The terminology was suggestive. You may find archived posts by searching through this blog or clicking on the tag below.

C 2021 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

VALENTINES DAY

The day to wear your heart on your sleeve but why buy chocolates or flowers when you can write a love letter or poem and leave it under a special person's pillow?

STEAMSHIPS and LINES - WHO WAS THE CAPTAIN? #8

Since you'll want to include some rich details to your family immigration story and it's so easy to do now with databases and Internet sites offering pictures for personal use, you can include information about the ship and shipping line and the ports your ancestor encountered. Was the ship one of the largest? What was the décor like? You might find books published that feature photos of the interior. There's lots available about the various shipping lines, such as White Star.

Go to the beginning of the ship manifest for the voyage your ancestor was on and you'll see that it begins with the name of the captain and surgeon and crew. What nationality do their surnames suggest ?

Then first and second class passengers are listed. Do any of the passengers sound familiar to you? You might want to include details such as how many passengers were on the ship and how many were in steerage. 

I notice that the steerage passengers often seem to be listed by ethnicity or origin.

You want to go to the beginning of the manifest as well to get the port of departure and date it left. Did it stop in Southhampton, England? Did it sail the Mediterranean before heading across the Atlantic?

As a side note the Queen Mary is available for touring as it is an attraction in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California. I took the tour and the ship was emptied out to be a pitch black empty space below the waterline where the engines and cargo would have been. It was so much smaller than today's ships, which are like cities on the ocean. Scenes from the novel Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Woulk, which came out in the 1950's, take place on the Queen Mary. It's one of my favorite books. I wanted to see the swimming pool, which was described in a scene in the book. It was a surprisingly small tiled square. I could imagine the water in it following the movement of the ship but not the scene depicted in the book of swimmers using the tiled space as a beach. More surprising to me seeing it, the Queen Mary was larger than the Titanic.

No, I didn't see any ghosts.

C 2021

Keep reading! This is part of a series!

GET THAT VALENTINE INTO THE DAILY MAIL

 

IS THE AGE (AND OTHER DATA) RIGHT ON THE MANIFEST? #7

I began to question this after seeing ELLIS ISLAND passenger lists where a whole page of immigrants were listed as five foot six tall. I began to wonder. Surely these men were not actually measured.

Well, when you're dealing with trying to find or follow a person with a common name, their age can be important.  

This is also about trying to locate records of birth in another country. 

Example from my research:

The same fellow is listed on various documents such as his wedding to his second, much younger, wife, and census records, federal and state, at different ages, leaving me with a six year range of birth dates to deal with. Was he chipping away at his age due to that younger wife, trying to minimalize the age difference? Did he himself not know his age or did other family members report false information to a census taker?

On all these documents from ship manifests forth, all other family members including that wife and children have correct ages.

It gets curiouser and curiouser. I've employed every tactic I know to locate his baptismal and have the names of his parents on his first marriage. I've spent hours on Familysearch. So you see, even someone with thirty years experience in genealogy research can hit a brick wall. I must conclude that his birth and baptismal records do not exist or his mother gave birth somewhere far from the family stead. It doesn't help that there were military actions in the potential years of his birth.

Wish me luck on this one!

C 2021

Note: Obituaries, tombstone, death certificates, can provide good information but I've found erroneous information on all of these. Yep, even carved on a very expensive tomb stone.

 

Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

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