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.

REVISITING HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. and FINDING YOUR ROOTS

PBS HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. FINDING YOUR ROOTS

I'm rewatching beginning with Season One.  LOUIS HENRY GATES Jr., who I respect, says that about ten percent of contemporary Black Americans have ancestors who were Free Persons of Color - not slaves.

I had one client whose New Orleans heritage took us to Free Persons of Color ancestors.  The reaction was a subtle disbelief at my research, as I showed them that their people had been part of a thriving crafts and tradesman community in which people lived in beautiful houses - some on tours today.

Who is or is not Black?

What is the difference between the White actress who most relates to her most recent Jewish heritage though she's got White Anglo Saxon heritage that goes back to King Henry the First of England, basically "feeling" herself Jewish" and someone whose appearance would not lead the average person to guess they have Black Heritage or someone whose DNA proves they are just a little bit African, but who most relates to contemporary Black culture?

In genealogy we search for documents.

But people often feel themselves to be most comfortable with one culture - including religion and spirituality - over another.  I sometimes think this has to do with past life memories, which I realize is controversial.  But through reincarnation we can experience what it is to live in different cultures, to be Japanese in the 14th century, or to have fought in the Civil War in this country for the Confederates.

As a result of reading hundreds if not thousands of documents as well as reading around American history,  and my belief that reincarnation is real, I may have a different feeling about my own life and that of others.

We must ask ourselves WHY are we here in this life?  What have we brought forward from the past, what have we learned, where do we want to go?


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GENEALOGY SHOW YOUTUBE VIDEOS BECOME PAY FOR SERIES - THE VALUE OF PRINT LIBRARIES

I want to respect other people's copyrights but I do listen to and watch YouTube videos.  I know that what started as a volunteer and free service, which made listening to artists who were not getting paid or asked permission, falls into an area of copyright that says for personal use and research or to illustrate a point, a person doesn't have to go through a permissions process.  YouTube has departed into pay for play films and videos and this is a reason I fail to post many here at ANCESTRY WORSHIP - Genealogy BlogSpot. If I find an ad attached to a video, I tend to skip the ad immediately or do not watch it, searching for someone who posted not expecting financial return.

But sometimes when I'm resting, I like to listen to reruns of Who Do You Think You Are, or Louis Henry Gates Jr's series, Finding Your Roots.  Not long ago I spent a Sunday morning in bed watching these videos on my cell phone.  Sometimes I learn from them.  Sometimes I'm compelled to watch a particular video because I like the celebrity.  

I saw a blurb about Carly Simon, the singer/songwriter who is known for her own creative musical work as well as her marriage-with-children to singer/songwriter James Taylor. I've listened to her albums.  I listened to her memoir on audio book. I also read a Vanity Fair magazine article long ago that suggested that there was a mystery attached to her mother's parentage. She had been told that her mother's mother was an orphan, perhaps an illegitimate member of the Spanish royal family.  Simon's mother was Catholic and her father was Jewish.  The not so religious family was raised in The Ethical Cultural Society (if I remember correctly).  The Gates blurb suggested that the truth was her grandmother was of Cuban-African origin and the Spanish royal family connection was probably a myth.  Louis Henry Gates Jr. was there telling Carly Simon that of all the white people he had tested, she had the most African DNA of all, 10%. So of course I wanted to see that show.

I learned that few of the videos are still available without paying - about $1.99 per - and was disappointed.

Yet I know I can go to my public library and find these on CD (if not electronic books) and watch them for free.  What, if anything, libraries pay for these items to offer to the patron/citizens/library card holders, I do not know.  I love libraries and have cards for two local cities, a county, and a state library card.  These days due to all the books available as electronic books and the use of cell phones as personal computers, there is some question about the value of libraries with print/paper offerings or even the value of offering public computer use in them.  At one time the libraries were full of students using these public computers to do their assignments but now children have computers at their schools or are given laptops to do their work on.

I know that librarians themselves as well as library systems with lots of property and locations are asking themselves what value they will have in the future and it seems to be working in education, in particular in reading. Hand in hand with educational programs, local libraries offer classes to help immigrants become citizens and adults learn to read.  But will they really need as much staff?

In my area it seems retired librarians are working part time in the system and this is slowing the number of new librarians being hired.

At some point it's possible that a library card will entitle direct payment by the library for a patron's use of YouTube videos and other electronic offerings not available from the library.

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WATCHING "FINDING YOUR ROOTS" : DNA GENEALOGY A GREAT FEATURE OF THESE SHOWS : OPINION by ANCESTRTY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

Recently I borrowed the PBS genealogy series, called FINDING YOUR ROOTS, featuring Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a great number of famous people with diverse backgrounds.  Watching a TV series one show after another is a different experience than tuning in once a week, and I wrote down my impressions.

1)  I have a lot of respect for Louis Henry Gates, Jr., especially since he has flat out stated that Africans SOLD other Africans as slaves.  There has been a lot of denial on that issue. He has said that the stories of people being captured and taken away while out in the bush are greatly exaggerated - generally just not true.  I note that this is part of the story in the book and TV series Roots.

2) There is an underlying anti-racism theme in these shows and a lot of pride about what ancestors, especially Jews, have suffered.  A great many of the featured famous people have some non-white ancestry, so a person who is completely or mostly white is a rarity, and some are learning about their Jewish, Asian, or other than white ancestry.  A fact is a fact, DNA research has progressed rapidly, and my suspicion is that it's actually very difficult to find a lot of people today who don't have some non-white ancestry.  That's because it is a myth that white people dominate this world.  So this underlying theme is about people trying on the fact that somewhere in their past, documented or not, someone reproduced with someone of another race.  Sadly this often means rape.

3)  Lots of historical references that put the ancestors in their historical context is terrific.  I've always loved learning history through the characters in the story and think this is essential for writing your own family history.

4)  Cutting edge DNA is used and explanations of how it works is very helpful to understanding the possibilities in research.  For instance in Gates own family tree, no one knew the name of his white ancestor but through several DNA tests one particular match came up, and now he gets to explore that through documents, interviewing, etc.

5) It's always obvious that the show plugs the Ancestry genealogy database company.  That's OK but remember there are many other electronic resources that can be of great use and that we can still hire professionals, go to archives, historical societies, graveyards, and so on that are NOT up on any database.

6) I have a couple more DVD's of the series ordered, but so far there has not been one person from a Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, or other Central-Eastern European background WHO WAS NOT JEWISH.  If there is a sub-theme of the ancestors suffering, Catholic, Christian, and other religious people of Europe also suffered.  It's not all about slavery in the United States and the WWII era Holocaust!  (Update April 2 2015:  Just watched a show about Martha Stewart who does have Polish Ancestry and it turns out some Moslems in Poland too! - So, OK, she's the exception.)

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